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This paper addresses the effects of employment protection legislation on job mobility and status attainment among young people entering the labour market. Since strict employment protection legislation (EPL) reduces labour market turnover and results in low vacancy levels, the paper argues that stringent EPL reduces market entrants' chances of both job and upward status mobility, and thus flattens observed status-experience profiles. Labour Force Survey data for 11 European countries support these assertions: estimates from multilevel continuous state space hazard models show both job and status mobility to be negatively related to strict employment protection legislation. Hence, any positive EPL effects from the higher stability of young peoples' initial jobs are dominated by the system-level effect of strict EPL reducing opportunity levels in external labour markets. Upward mobility chances are found to be markedly reduced in the high-skill segment of the labour market and among market entrants in unfavourable initial job matches. In total, cross-national variation in EPL strictness is estimated to account for about one-third of cross-national differences in mobility rates and even 50% of cross-national differences in terms of status returns to job mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of institutional factors on the structure of matching processes in external labour markets. Drawing on 1984-1995 employment history data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation and the German Socio-Economic Panel, the paper describes re-employment dynamics for unemployed workers in the United States and West Germany. Consistent with earlier research that has emphasized the strong skill stratification of the German labour market, the data show lower rates of occupational mobility among unemployed workers in Germany. Using a two-sided probit model, the paper tests for two key generative mechanisms: more comprehensive labour market regulation Potentially implying risk-averse hiring by employers, and more comprehensive social security that may induce more selective job search by workers. The empirical data support both predictions, so that both low levels of labour market regulation and low levels of welfare state support are conducive to higher levels of occupational mobility, higher churning of specific skills and loose linkages between individual and job skills in the US labour market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the employment and occupational mobility patterns of Soviet Jewish immigrants in Israel. I compare results for Soviet immigrants who arrived in the moderately sized migration wave of the 1970s to those who arrived in the midst of the enormous wave of the late 1980s and 1990s, thus casting light on the implications of mass migration for the reproduction of stratification systems. The findings show that the Israeli labour market is far more saturated in the 1990s than it was in the 1970s, and this occupational crowding results in high rates of unemployment among immigrants. Unemployment rates are disproportionately high for male immigrants originating in high-status occupations, while females experience high unemployment regardless of occupational origin. For immigrants who are employed in Israel, there is much downward occupational mobility induced by disjunctures between occupational opportunities and occupational inputs. Nevertheless, despite limited opportunities, the few jobs that are available are often filled by immigrants who held those positions in Russia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does social mobility influence cultural taste and participation? Cultural reproduction theory predicts little change, while cultural mobility theory suggests more substantial makeover. This article explores the influence of upward educational and occupational mobility in reading literature, participation in highbrow activities, television watching, and music and food tastes, focusing on mobility from the secondary-level education and the working class to the higher education and the middle class. By analysing survey data (N = 2,813) collected in Finland in 2007 and 2018 with ordinary least squares regression, we show that educational mobility and occupational mobility are mostly differently related to tastes and participation. Both educationally and occupationally upwardly mobile people tend to participate more in highbrow activities, watch less television and dislike meat-heavy food, as is more typical to their social destination than to their social origins. Conversely, the educationally upwardly mobile, again more typical to their destination, tend to read more books, like light-ethnic food and classical music, and dislike popular folk, but occupational mobility is not associated with reading or liking light-ethnic food, and the occupationally mobile retain their original tastes in classical and popular folk music when education is controlled for. We discuss the implications of our results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Work learning is the skills and the knowledge that is generated from work practices and in exchange of information at work. While there are good reasons to fear that frequent job changers do not learn thoroughly at work, it is also conceivable that the experience of many types of jobs instead yields greater learning. Despite this issue's significance for on-going discussions in research and policy, thorough analyses of it are surprisingly sparse. In this study, we test whether job mobility is positively or negatively associated with subsequent work learning using data from two Swedish representative datasets (LNU and PIAAC). In order to substantiate both claims, we utilize a wide array of research on human capital, job matching, labor market segmentation and learning motivation. We analyze a broad set of indicators of work learning and show that job mobility in general is associated with greater total subsequent learning than is job stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research on overeducation focused on labour market entrants and investigated the role of individual characteristics and, more recently, labour market and educational institutions. This article shifts the focus to primeage workers, exploring the relation between economic conditions, related labour market dynamics, and overeducation across 16 European countries in the aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis. We regard cross-sectional overeducation rates as the result of past labour market dynamics involving employers' hiring and dismissal decisions and employees' job mobility. Based on data from the 2011/2012 Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competences (PIAAC), we estimate mixed-effects linear-probability models. We find that overeducation risks are higher for individuals who experienced job mobility after the outbreak of the crisis (movers) than for those who were able to keep their jobs, with workers who changed their job before the crisis (short-term stayers) experiencing higher overeducation risks than long-term stayers. These differences are partly explained by compositional and contextual factors—however, our newly introduced differentiation of labour market dynamics profiles also shows an independent effect. Moreover, tertiary graduates are more likely to be overeducated than workers with upper-secondary qualifications—controlling for workers' skill heterogeneity. The findings on macroeconomic conditions are mixed: overeducation risks are higher in contexts of poorer economic conditions and even more so for movers; however, the multiplicative negative effect for movers disappears after controlling for job characteristics. This finding suggests that post-crisis mobility channeled workers more often into labour market segments with inferior job conditions where the risk of overeducation is generally higher. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we pursue, using appropriate British birth cohort data, various issues that arise from recent research into the 'direct' effect of social origins on individuals' social mobility chances: i.e. the effect that is not mediated by education and that can be seen as giving rise to non-meritocratic 'glass floors' and 'glass ceilings'. We show that if educational level is determined at labour market entry, class destinations are significantly associated with class origins independently of education. However, we go on to investigate how far the direct effect may be underestimated by an insufficiently comprehensive treatment of social origins, and also how far it may be overestimated by a failure to take into account the effects of later-life education and resulting changes in individuals' relative qualification levels. Finally, having arrived at our best estimates of the extent of the direct effect, we seek to identify factors that mediate it. While individuals' cognitive ability and sense of locus of control prove to play some part, reported parental help in the labour market does not appear to be of any great importance. Some implications of our findings both for further research and for the ideal of an education-based meritocracy are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the relationship between job mobility and wage mobility for salaried workers at the beginning of the employment career in eight European countries. While job-to-job mobility is associated with positive rewards, there are competing theories for job mobility via unemployment. Search and matching models predict that an unemployment phase might result in positive rewards. In contrast, signalling and human capital theories predict a negative impact of unemployment on future wages. Our results indicate that the validity of theoretical concepts is largely dependent on the institutional context. Job mobility via unemployment yields high rewards for job movers in Ireland and the United Kingdom and to a lesser degree in Southern Europe, but negative outcomes in Austria and Germany. In contrast, job-to-job mobility rewards job movers with positive outcomes in all countries, though to a lesser extent in southern European countries. Search and matching models are therefore more appropriate for predicting outcomes in countries of liberal regime, while signalling and human capital models yield better predictions in countries with stricter employment legislation and tighter occupational boundaries. In southern European countries, the insider-outsider fragmentation of the labour market impairs predictive power of both theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses how modernization processes influenced social openness in Hungarian municipalities between 1870 and 1950. Our focus is on relative occupational mobility, which reflects the underlying pattern of inequalities in attaining class positions. We derive hypotheses from the ‘theory of industrialization’ on the association between social fluidity and modernization processes. We test these for a late-industrializing country, Hungary. A large-scale historical micro-data set, spanning the period 1870–1950 is used to construct 633 mobility tables based on marriage cohorts within 62 municipalities. We specify parsimonious association models to estimate social fluidity from each mobility table, and test our hypotheses in a subsequent step, using multivariate regression analyses with cohort-and-municipality–based indicators of modernization processes. We use a stronger explanatory design than previous studies by including fixed effects to control for stable historical municipal characteristics. We find that increasing educational opportunities led to a decline in nonagrarian manual and nonmanual class rigidities, and that industrialization decreased class rigidities of the nonmanual classes. Agrarian class reproduction was unaffected by modernization. Modernization processes explain most of the temporal variation in the social fluidity of manual classes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article investigates direct job mobility and job mobility via unemployment at the beginning of the employment career in Germany. While the rationale of predicting outcomes of direct job mobility are similar in liberal countries, Germany’s rigid labour market might have different implications for job mobility via unemployment. Using the German Socio-Economic Panel 1984–2006, we will address the following two questions. First, we will investigate the gains/losses for direct job mobility and mobility through unemployment. Here we are especially interested in whether job mobility via unemployment has long-lasting consequences on future earnings. Second, we will address the question of whether income development for direct and indirect job mobility is dependent on the reasons behind the job termination. The analyses show that, in a rigid labour market, only direct voluntary job mobility brings permanent income rewards. Indirect job mobility, on the other hand, has a long-lasting scar effect not only for involuntary but also for voluntary job movers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article tests the popular social capital hypothesis in the context of recent temporary labour migration from Poland to Germany. It relies on data from the Polish Migration Project, which, following the model of the prominent Mexican Migration Project, collected rich longitudinal information on residents of four Polish communities in 2005. Discrete event history analyses are used to test, first, whether since 1989 prior migration experience of others indeed had an independent impact on the likelihood of making a working trip to Germany and, second, in how far this can explain the observed dynamics over time. In the course of the analyses it turns out that some of the variables frequently used as indicators of migration-specific social capital seem to be problematic. Thus, besides adding the Polish–German experience to discussions on the role of social capital in explaining contemporary migration, the article also contributes to general methodological issues involved. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article aims to examine gender and cohort differences in life-course occupational mobility in Britain and in particular the strength of the effects of career entry on subsequent upward or downward mobility. Does a ‘bad start’ in working life typically result in being trapped in the bottom tier of the occupational hierarchy or can it represent a stepping-stone towards more rewarding positions? Are there any gender differences in the effects of low entry occupations on subsequent careers? If so, are these differences stable or changing over time? Using large-scale data from the National Child Development Study and the British Cohort Study, we investigate individuals’ occupational careers between the ages of 16 and 34 using an occupational scale based on the hourly average earnings of full-time workers. Although women's and men's career patterns in Britain have become more similar over time, women face the greatest and growing hindrance to career advancement from low level entry jobs. Entering at the bottom of the occupational hierarchy is more likely to represent a trap for women, while for men it is rather a stepping-stone to more favourable positions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article investigates the impact of continuing education and training for adults on labour market performance in Germany, Denmark, and the United Kingdom. The central hypothesis is that training outcomes differ across countries, and that this heterogeneity in outcomes is due to institutional differences, which may affect the quality of the training provided. Drawing on data from the European Community Household Panel the article analyses (i) how far continuing training reduces the risk of future unemployment spells, (ii) if training increases the odds of re-entering the labour market given unemployment, and (iii) whether training fosters upward occupational mobility. The results suggest that the impact of training varies across the three countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we study job shift patterns in the former East and West Germany. We compare rates of (within-firm and across-firm) job mobility of East and West German men and study the impact of labor market composition (education, social class, industrial sector, and firm size) on the mobility rates. Our hypotheses are derived from an institutional approach in which we describe similarities and differences in institutions and structures of the two former German labor markets. Analyses of retrospective job history data from German Life History Studies revealed a basic similarity in the odds of job shifting of East and West German male workers. Yet, East German men differed from West German men in having higher odds of job mobility within a firm and lower odds of job mobility to other firms. Explanatory analyses show that firm size accounts best for the country difference in the rate of within-firm job mobility: 40 per cent of the higher within-firm mobility rate can be accounted for by the greater size of firms in East Germany. These findings suggest that state-socialism affected work life mobility and that it did so in part through differential labor market composition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study is designed to examine the effect of ethnic origin on the economic performance of immigrants from the former Soviet Union in the Israeli labour market, as measured by (1) labour-force participation; (2) occupational mobility; and (3) earnings. We differentiate between two distinct groups of immigrants: those who came from Asia and those who came from European republics of the former Soviet Union. All immigrants arrived in Israel during the last quarter of 1990. Data on these immigrants were obtained from a longitudinal special survey conducted by the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics in 1992, 1993, and 1994. The results show that gender and ethnicity are major determinants of immigrants' assimilation into the Israeli labour market. The effect of ethnic origin is evident in all measures of economic performance among women, and in earnings among men. Other things being equal, Asian women are less likely than European women to participate in the labour force, to work in high-status occupations, and to earn as much as European women do. Asian men earn less than equally qualified European men. These findings are discussed in light of theoretical models of immigrants' assimilation and ethnic-based stratification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the influence of further education on occupational upward and downward mobility in Switzerland. The influence of basic education obtained before labour-force entry on status attainment has been well documented in the literature. What is less well understood is the impact of further education on occupational achievement. In the past, research on status attainment and occupational mobility in sociology has largely ignored further education. As some have pointed out, the omission of further education may have caused two problems. One is that the effects of further education on occupational attainment may have been wrongly attributed to social background, basic education, or previous occupational status. The other is that occupational upward mobility as a result of further education attainment may be erroneously attributed to labour-force processes. These problems are especially serious when a significant amount of further educational attainment occurs after labour-force entry, as it does in a number of European countries. In this study, the authors attempt to bridge these gaps. Based on human-capital, signal/filter, and segmentation theories, we develop hypotheses that link type-specific further education attainment to occupational mobility. The empirical analysis focuses on the effect of further education on upward and downward mobility, gender and cohort differences in this process, and the extent to which the effect of further education may be attributed to selection bias.

In this study we operationalize neo-Marxian (Wright) and Weberian (Goldthorpe) class concepts and compare mobility patterns across three industrial countries (the United States, Sweden, and the former West Germany), using data from the Comparative Project on Class Structure and Class Consciousness. The analysis demonstrates that, despite differences in gross mobility between Wright's and Goldthorpe's class schemes, the within-nation fluidity patterns do not differ by class scheme for these three countries. The results based on Wright's and Goldthorpe's class frameworks lead to essentially the same conclusion about across-country differences or similarities in fluidity patterns. The results based on Wright's framework are informative of expected country differences in class impermeability as structured by the three dimensions of property, skill, and authority, whereas those based on Goldthorpe's reveal cross-country variations in barriers as structured by economic and occupational sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We apply optimal matching techniques to class careen from age 15 to age 35 for two moderately large samples, as a means of exploring the utility of this sequence-oriented approach for the analysis of work-life social mobility. We first apply multi-dimensional scaling techniques to the inter-sequence distances generated by the optimal matching algorithm in order to test whether the technique locates sequences in a coherent and interpretable space. We find the space to be highly patterned and reasonably interpretable. Next we run the two moderately large samples (each approximately 1500 sequences) through the; analysis and examine the nature of the set of clusters that emerges. We find the dusters to be distinct and an intuitively attractive grouping of the sequences. Finally, we consider how the clusters are distributed across cohorts: the distributions change markedly, though this is largely due to changes in the distribution of classes over time. We briefly discuss means of separating `pure sequence' change from change in the gross `class time-budget' of cohorts, and consider means of applying statistical models to the problem. We conclude by endorsing Optimal Matching Analysis, especially as a means of exploratory analysis of longitudinal data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents 41 educational heterogamy tables for 23 industrial nations after World War 11. Countries differ in gross heterogamy rates and relative chances of heterogamy. Evidence is found in favour of a trend towards higher gross rates of heterogamy and towards more equal relative chances of heterogamy. Hypotheses on effects of economic and political factors are tested. The contribution these factors make to the explanation of relative heterogamy is smaller than found in studies on intergenerational mobility. Between countries more equal relative father-to-son occupational mobility chances go together with more equal relative chances of educational heterogamy. Within countries relative mobility chances are more equal than relative chances of heterogamy. All in all Lipset and Zetterberg's notion of general societal openness is confirmed, whereas Bourdieu's notion that mobility and heterogamy are compensatory strategies of reproduction is not upheld. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Occupational mobility patterns are assumed to be an accurate description of the process of social structuration. By a canonical analysis of occupational mobility tables from nine countries an attempt is made to reveal dominant patterns of intergenerational movements. Our findings show that, as indexed by mobility patterns, basic aspects of social structuration are cross-nationally invariant. These are: (i) a sharp distinction between farm and non-farm occupations; (ii) a socioeconomic hierarchy of non-agricultural categories; (iii) a distinctive position of the occupational elite; (iv) a white-collar/blue-collar division; (v) a distinctive location of non-farm proprietors. The results call in question the traditional thesis claiming the strong prevalence of the socioeconomic status dimension in social space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between class mobility and job mobility is investigated using retrospective career history data from the Federal Republic of Germany. Although few sociological theories speak directly to this problem, many current ideas imply expected patterns. Among these we explore theories of class reproduction, work degradation, bureaucracy, industrial segmentation and the life course. The findings show that class mobility and job mobility are distinct processes, each yielding a different view of the opportunity structure of Germany. Moreover, the dynamic perspective suggests that cross-sectional analyses of mobility give a misleading view of work trajectories. We also find strong effects of industrial sector, firm size, education and class background. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present data on occupational mobility in the Republic of Ireland in greater detail than has been available previously. The primary datum is a 14 x 14 mobility table. The categories are subclassifications of the nine categories used in analyses of other European societies by Erikson, Goldthorpe, and others. The refined categories show details of mobility in Ireland that are important for understanding the complete structure of association between class origins and destinations. Gross rates of mobility in Ireland are lower than the rates observed in countries for which comparable data are available. Furthermore, the mobility that occurs is very often mobility between categories that differ little in market position or socioeconomic status. We find that the relative low mobility rate in Ireland is due to the combined effects of an occupational composition that favours immobility and a pattern of strong association between class origins and destinations. 'Countermobility,' i.e., instances of downward mobility to first jobs (often in unpaid work on a farm or in a shop) followed by upward career mobility that returns the worker to his class of origin is also an important component of Irish occupational mobility. The association between origins and destinations has a very strong vertical component which we measure using prestige and educational credentials. Market position affects immobility as informal labour markets increase immobility while bureaucratic recruitment decreases it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]