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This paper evaluates the productivity impacts and the subsequent adjustment costs associated with hiring different knowledge workers. I focus on the difference between hiring former entrepreneurs, employees who change jobs, and unemployed individuals. I am the first to evaluate the direct impact that hiring former entrepreneurs has on firm productivity and the heterogenous adjustment costs associated with the different types of new hires. I find no difference between the first-year adjustment costs of entrepreneurs and those of regular-wage employees. Hiring former entrepreneurs is a way to increase productivity after the first year of employment only if the former entrepreneurs are from the highest end of the ability distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the link between lateral mobility and promotions. The first part of the paper extends the theoretical literature by incorporating lateral moves into a job assignment model with task-specific human capital accumulation. The model thus predicts that workers who are laterally moved in one period are more likely to be subsequently promoted and experience larger wage growth compared with workers who are not laterally moved. In addition, workers with very high levels of education are less likely to be laterally moved compared with workers with lower levels of education. We test the model's predictions using a large employer–employee linked panel dataset on senior managers in a sample of large US firms during the period 1981 to 1985. Our findings support the theoretical predictions and show the importance of lateral mobility in wage and promotion dynamics. (JEL J31, M51) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

We investigate unemployment due to mismatch in the United States over the past three and a half decades. We propose an accounting framework that allows us to estimate the contribution of each of the frictions that generated labor market mismatch. Barriers to job mobility account for the largest part of mismatch unemployment, with a smaller role for barriers to worker mobility. We find little contribution of wage-setting frictions to mismatch. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using hand-collected data on CEO noncompete agreements (NCAs), we find that NCAs are less common when CEOs expect to incur greater personal costs from reduced job mobility and more common when firms expect to suffer greater economic harm if departing CEOs leave to work for a competitor. Additionally, turnover-performance sensitivity is stronger when CEOs have NCAs. Finally, total compensation and incentive pay are higher if CEOs have more enforceable NCAs. Our identification strategy exploits staggered state-level changes in NCA enforceability. Overall, our findings suggest that restrictions on job mobility have important implications for how CEOs are monitored and compensated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we use multilevel growth-curve analysis to model occupational stratification across West German careers for cohorts born between 1919 and 1971. We argue that a life-course approach gives a more appropriate perspective into social stratification by focusing on the permanence of inequalities across human lives. With data from the German Life History Study (GLHS), our primary interest is in the amount and timing of career progression and the ways in which educational attainment, class background, and cohort context shape them. We confirm previous findings of limited career progression and permanence in occupational inequality. Thus, career mobility can correct for initial disadvantages only to a limited degree. We also confirm the strong role played by the standardized and stratified German educational system, which channels workers into specific occupations with strict boundaries. We find a substantial gross effect of class background, which is strongly mediated by educational attainment for women but not for men. We do not find any general indications of a trend in change across cohorts, although there are some weak indications that men who entered the labor market in the problematic 1970s had weaker career growth. We conclude by discussing the advantages of a life-course approach to occupational stratification and the possibilities of growth-curve analysis to answer pertinent questions in research on careers and occupational mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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]

Traditional models of education demand assume that the worker is preparing for a lifetime career in one job with certain returns. In reality, however, during their lives individuals move between jobs and occupations with uncertain returns and skills become useless as a consequence. A simple two-period model of occupational mobility, based on uncertainty, with endogenous general and job-specific learning is constructed to answer two major questions: 1. What is the effect of occupational mobility and risk aversion on the demand for education? 2. Do mobility and general education go together at the expense of specific training? The worker is assumed to choose a utility-maximizing strategy of job mobility caused by his uncertain success in any particular job. Education by changing the wage distributions of one or more jobs will affect his optimal mobility strategy. At the same time, changing jobs in response to particularly bad "luck" in the first job makes specific training obsolete. Hence, mobility and education are in some sense simultaneously determined. A twofold interaction between general and specific skills is assumed; general education partially replaces specific skills and, like ability, reduces the costs of obtaining specific skills. The paper is divided into three parts. Section 1 develops a model of job mobility and education demand and analyses the effects of risk and risk aversion on these choices. Section 2 considers the demand for specific training in a mobility model where general education is exogenous. Section 3 then makes general education a choice variable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the impact of employer-provided health insurance on job mobility by exploring the extent to which workers are "locked" into their jobs because preexisting conditions exclusions make it expensive for individuals with medical problems to relinquish their current health insurance. I estimate the degree of job-lock by comparing the difference in the turnover rates of those with high and low medical expenses for those with and without employer-provided health insurance. Using data from the 1987 National Medical Expenditure Survey, I estimate that job-lock reduces the voluntary turnover rate of those with employer-provided health insurance by 25 percent, from 16 percent to 12 percent per year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the seminal work of Becker (1964), it is widely accepted in the literature that firms will be unwilling to finance training which workers may use in other firms. This paper takes issue with this prediction and suggests that firms will frequently share in the cost of such general training.[1] Becker argues that a firm which pays for the training of workers in skills of potential use to other firms will lose these workers: since other firms bear none of the costs Of general training, they can attract a worker with such training by outbidding the firm which trained him. Recognising this absence of property rights over an investment in general training, firms will refuse to provide it. Hence, if general training is to take place, the trainee will have to pay for it. If potential trainees are unwilling or unable to pay, general training will not take place. A shortage in general training is likely to emerge; this may be especially pronounced in developing countries.[2] In contrast, the outlook for specific training (training that is of value only in the firm providing it) is less pessimistic, since firms are willing to finance such training. Indeed, it is likely that specific training will be a shared investment between worker and employer. The major premise of this paper is that potential recruiters do not possess much information on the extent and type of workers' on-the-job training. Workers taken for trained might turn out to possess no, or very little, general * The views expressed in the paper are the authors'; they are not necessarily those of the organisations with which they are affiliated. 1 An earlier presentation of our ideas was given in Katz and Ziderman (1989). 2 Poverty, low liquidity and badly functioning capital markets militate against the possibility of significant worker-financed general training. Becker's result, therefore, implies a dismal outlook for general training in developing countries. 3 See Parsons (1972), Donaldson and ... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When employers conduct more internal hiring, does this facilitate upward mobility for low-paid workers or does it protect the already advantaged? To assess the effect of within-employer job mobility on occupational stratification, we develop a framework that accounts for inequality in both rates and payoffs of job changing. Internal hiring facilitates advancement for workers without strong credentials, but it excludes workers at employers with few good jobs to advance into. Analyzing Current Population Survey data, we find that when internal hiring increases in a local labor market, it facilitates upward mobility less than when external hiring increases. When workers in low-paid occupations switch jobs, they benefit more from switching employers than from moving jobs within the same employer. One-third of this difference is due to low-paid workers isolated in industries with few high-paying jobs to transfer into. An occupationally segregated labor market therefore limits the benefits that internal hiring can bring to the workers who most need upward mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social capital (SC) plays a fundamental role in immigration by easing entry into a new environment. We advance a novel approach to assessing the role of SC for immigrants' labor market incorporation. First, we isolate the impact of SC activation from the mere presence of potential help. Second, we disentangle the diverse components of migration-related SC by distinguishing between individual migration- (IM) and community migration-level (CM) connections in the country of destination. Third, we trace the roles of IM SC and CM SC across multiple labor market outcomes, ranging from the search to secure the first job to the quality of the first job to longer-term occupational mobility. Absent activation, IM SC has virtually no impact on any of the outcomes. Rather, migrants' IM SC yield their fundamental impact when activated, contributing to a successful job search while steering them into first jobs that are of lower-quality relative to their pre-migration occupation. By contrast, CM SC facilitates the initial job search and filters immigrants into higher-quality first jobs. Moreover, immigrants who arrive when CM SC is at its most mature stage reap the clearest benefits in improving their occupational status. These findings underscore the importance of both early settlement IM SC and CM SC in the processes of immigrants' labor market stratification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines how workplace technological innovation is associated with individual-level employment turnover. We advance the literature by studying how the impact of technology differs for Dutch native workers and workers with non-Western immigrant backgrounds. Furthermore, we examine the disparate impacts of organizational context, as indexed by the proportion of workers with non-Western immigrant backgrounds and workplace job volatility, as well as industry-level unionization. Using large-scale Dutch matched employer–employee longitudinal data for the period 2001–2014, we find technology implementation to decrease chances of job ending, but this innovation protection is smaller and sometimes absent for workers with non-Western immigrant backgrounds than for native Dutch workers. This pattern is most marked for first-generation immigrants and immigrants from non-Dutch-speaking countries. We also find evidence of organization-level ethnic competition effects among low and middle educated workers, but not for workers with tertiary degrees. Among lower educated workers technological displacement is exaggerated in workplaces that employ many workers with immigrant backgrounds, although unionization mutes this effect. Among middle educated workers technological displacement is exaggerated in high-turnover workplaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the relationship between disability, job mismatch, earnings and job satisfaction using panel estimation on data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey (2001–08). While we do not find any relationship between work-limiting disability and overskilling, it appears that there is a positive relationship between work-limiting disability and overeducation, which is consistent with disability onset leading to downward occupational movement, at least in relative terms. We find a negative correlation between work-limiting disability and both earnings and job satisfaction. However, there is only evidence of a causal relationship in terms of the latter, where the impact of disability is found to be multifaceted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does flexible pay increase the gender wage gap? To answer this question, we analyze the wages of public school teachers in Wisconsin, where a 2011 reform allowed school districts to set teachers' pay more flexibly and engage in individual negotiations. Using quasi-exogenous variation in the timing of the introduction of flexible pay, driven by the expiration of preexisting collective-bargaining agreements, we show that flexible pay lowered the salaries of women compared with men with the same credentials. This gap is larger for younger teachers and smaller for teachers working under a female principal or superintendent. Survey evidence suggests that the gap is partly driven by women engaging less frequently in negotiations over pay, especially when the counterpart is a man. The gap is unlikely to be driven by observable gender differences in job mobility or teacher ability, although the threat of moving and a high demand for male teachers could exacerbate it. Our results suggest that pay discretion and wage bargaining are important determinants of the gender wage gap and that institutions, such as unions, might help narrow this gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Shift work is widespread due to 24-h work in many occupations. Understanding differences in individual shift work tolerance (SWT) can help develop coping strategies for shift workers. Aims This in-depth qualitative review elucidates the architecture of SWT, providing an overview of the research advances in the last decade (2011–2021). Methods We searched Google Scholar, PubMed and Medline for different word combinations concerning SWT. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) for the potential genetic basis of SWT were additionally searched in GWAS Central and GWAS Catalogue. Results Eleven new studies were published since 2011, with the proportion of longitudinal studies on SWT having more than doubled in the past decade. They consolidate prior findings (e.g. hardiness most consistently associated with SWT) and discovered additional aspects of SWT like resistance to change and job stress. The 15 large-scale GWAS identified, most of which using UK Biobank (UKB) and 23andMe data, involved mapped genes showing overlap especially within analysis of the same phenotype (e.g. PER2/3 for morningness, PAX8 for sleep duration and LINGO1 for neuroticism). Individual GWAS for additional traits such as resilience have also been published though assessments of gene overlap are not yet possible. Conclusions Progress regarding longitudinal studies on SWT has been made though a more consistent definition of SWT remains crucial for future research. Non-genetic studies on SWT suggest several important traits and factors; many of which have now also been explored using GWAS. Such evidence could serve as basis for individualized risk prediction and disease prevention approaches for night-shift workers. [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]

In this article we argue that wage inequality and occupational mobility are intimately related. We are motivated by our empirical findings that human capital is occupation specific and that the fraction of workers switching occupations in the U.S. was as high as 16% a year in the early 1970’s and had increased to 21% by the mid-1990’s. We develop a general equilibrium model with occupation-specific human capital and heterogeneous experience levels within occupations. We find that the model, calibrated to match the level of occupational mobility in the 1970’s, accounts quite well for the level of (within-group) wage inequality in that period. Next, we find that the model, calibrated to match the increase in occupational mobility, accounts for over 90% of the increase in wage inequality between the 1970’s and the 1990’s. The theory is also quantitatively consistent with the level and increase in the short-term variability of earnings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the role of social relationships in facilitating knowledge flows by estimating the flow premium captured by a mobile inventor's previous location. Once an inventor has moved, they are gone—but are they forgotten? We find that knowledge flows to an inventor's prior location are approximately 50% greater than if they had never lived there, suggesting that social relationships, not just physical proximity, are important for determining flow patterns. Furthermore, we find that a large portion of this social effect is mediated by institutional links; however, this is not the result of corporate knowledge management systems but rather of personal relationships formed through co-location within an institutional context that endure over time, space, and organizational boundaries. Moreover, we find the effect is nearly twice as large for knowledge flows across as compared to within fields, suggesting that co-location may substitute for communities of practice in determining flow patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use the Flexible Professional in the Knowledge Society data set to learn about gender gaps during the early career of college graduates in Europe. We document substantial heterogeneity across fields of education in the gender wage gap at the entrance to the labour market. We find that the gap evolves against women over the five years after graduation in Social Science and in Economics, Business, and Law. Finally, we estimate a significant female wage growth penalty after we control for observable characteristics only within the Economics, Business, and Law category. Within this field, we estimate a female annual wage growth penalty of 1.1 percentage points among individuals who remained childless and 2.5 percentage points among individuals who became parents. A small fraction of the wage growth gap disappears after we control for variables capturing individual differences in job mobility or in labour market attachment during the early career. (JEL codes: J16, J24, J31) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, implemented by executive order in 2012, granted a subset of undocumented youth temporary relief from deportation, work authorization, and other benefits. While theories of immigrant integration predict that legalization will enable immigrant socioeconomic mobility, past research on DACA's effects on education and employment have reached mixed conclusions, possibly reflecting the limitations of different methodological approaches to the question. Using multiple data sources and mixed methods, we analyzed both whether and how DACA impacted education and employment among undocumented immigrants in California. Our difference-in-differences analysis of the 2007–2017 waves of the California Health Interview Study employs a more precise definition of the DACA-eligible population than previous studies, yet we also find mixed effects. Our analysis of surveys and in-depth interviews collected with DACA recipients in California provides context for this finding. DACA enabled college for some, but discouraged it for others. DACA recipients perceived substantial occupational mobility, but this was not reflected in movement out of the secondary labor market for many. Our findings suggest that without access to permanent legal status, DACA recipients will experience liminal legality with limited and contingent impacts on socioeconomic integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Focusing on white U.S. men aged 25-34, this paper compares the patterns of intergenerational occupational mobility in a late 19th century sample to those found in the well-known 1962 and 1973 surveys of Occupational Change in a Generation (OCGI and OCGII). While the overall pattern of mobility indicates less upward mobility and greater occupational inheritance among the 19th century men, the differences are small when comparisons are restricted to the nonfarm sector. Results from association models indicate a stronger relationship between origins and destinations in 1962 than in the late 1800s. In contrast, the 1973 OCGII data shows a virtually identical relationship between origins and destinations to that found in our 19th century sample. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Previous research suggests that British and American systems of social mobility are organized around different traditions and principles that produce similar mobility outcomes. In this paper we explore the implications of Turner' s distinction between sponsored and contest educational systems for the process of occupational career mobility in Great Britain and the United States. We use data on matched labor market cohorts from the Occupational Changes in a Generation Survey Il and the Oxford Social Mobility Study to examine the linkage between the education system and the occupational structure in the two countries, as well as the role of "further education" in the career process of British men. The results indicate that despite substantial differences in the way in which education and occupational credentials are obtained, the degree of openness in the two societies is about the same when one looks at occupational status ten and twenty years after labor force entry. We find, however, a notable degree of difference between the two societies in the process of career mobility. The results suggest that "sponsored" and "contest" are oversimplified labels for the differences in the career processes of British and American men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Labour mobility may be caused by shifts in the derived demand for labour on the part of firms or sectors, or it may be caused by mismatches between workers and their jobs. Both reasons may be important, and this paper merges them into one model. It explores the consequences for (a) wage-tenure relationships and (b) the issue of sluggishness of wages caused by the implied selectivity of workers into preferred jobs and sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a simple stochastic job matching model and uses it to derive a set of testable restrictions on the conditional probability with which a worker will be observed to change jobs over time. The restrictions describe the manner in which this probability varies with observable characteristics--current wage, labour market experience, tenure on current job, and past mobility. Econometric methods are also discussed, and some illustrative calculations provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a model of labor mobility which controls for ages and tenure, union membership and other influence on labor turnover. Use of information from the work histories of a sample of individuals residing in a British locality; Information on spells of job-related training; Control for unobserved heterogeneity.

The article examines deviant career mobility in male prostitutes. An important topic in the study of deviance is the deviant career, the individual's movement through the deviant experience. This paper examines career mobility in male prostitution, a world that is organized around the distribution of an illicit service. First, the author of this article identifies the stratification system in male prostitution and describe its three principal tiers, those of street hustling, bar hustling and escort prostitution. Second, the author describes how 28 male prostitutes moved through this system over the course of theft careers and identify the subjective and objective contingencies shaping their patterns of mobility. Deviant career mobility may be possible only in particular occupational worlds, but the idea that all members of such worlds want to advance and that economic properties of such worlds severely constrain advancement is dubious. The difficulty of advancement depends on the nature of the world's principal activity.

Abstract This paper clarifies the relationship between opportunity and mobility: first, by analyzing the ways opportunity differentials are created into three generic possibilities--through positional, historical, and resource variation; and, second, by uncovering certain logical relations that exist between opportunity differentials and differences in the amount of career mobility individuals experience. The first point offers a useful classification for ordering and comparing diverse theoretical approaches to career mobility. The basic conclusion of the second point is that all differences in career mobility between groups of individuals are logically explained by differences in the opportunities to move to which they are exposed and, further, all differences in the career mobility of individuals are due to chance variation within the constraints of the logically true aggregate relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Focusing on occupational change and mobility, current research on stratification has largely ignored some processes of structural change and mobility that are central to classical and contemporary class theories. In this paper, class mobility is assumed to depend in part on four structural changes in the organization of production: (1) a shift from agricultural to industrial forms of production; (2) a decline in self-employment and personal or family ownership of farms and businesses; (3) an expansion of the industrial working class; and (4) an expansion of the industrial manager class location. Analysis of class mobility in six capitalist societies (the United States, Great Britain, Northern Ireland, Argentina, Chile, and Bolivia) reveals that the sizeable differences among them in total class mobility can be explained largely by differences in the structure of classes. Apart from these structural differences, the societies shared essentially the same class mobility regime--one characterized by considerable rigidity of class boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Increasingly, sociologists concerned with occupational mobility and the changes in the occupational distribution are turning their attention to the structural conditions for such changes. One important change has been industry shifts, particularly the decline of agriculture and the growth of services. In this paper we argue that industry shifts have an important effect on changes in the occupational structure. Using a shift-share approach, changes in the occupational structure of the U.S. between 1960 and 1970 are decomposed into an industry shift effect, an occupational composition effect, and an interaction effect. These effects vary for major occupational categories, but for total U.S. employment the industry shift effect accounted for about two-thirds of the change in occupational structure, the composition effect for one-third, and the interaction effect was negligible. It is not likely that there will be as important shifts in the industry structure during the next 30 years as in the last 30 years. But it has been the industry shifts that have mostly contributed to an expansion of the higher status occupations, particularly professionals and managers. Therefore, unless the occupational composition changes in such a way as to compensate for the diminishing effects of the industry structure, structural opportunities will either remain at current levels or even decline in the years to come. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Previous research concerning the linkages between women's occupational origins and destinations has applied models developed for the study of men's intergenerational occupational mobility. In this paper, we use an approach that incorporates two unique aspects of women's occupational experiences. First, we consider housework to be a possible occupational outcome for women. Second, we consider the occupations of mothers as well as those of fathers in the portrayal of women's occupational origins. We show that this approach more fully displays the influences of occupational origins on women's subsequent occupational activities. In particular, we find that women whose mothers worked are themselves more likely to join the labor force, and their occupations are likely to resemble their mother's. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Observing a plethora of small entrepreneurial activities in the cities of developing countries, this paper examines the social significance of these occupational activities. The data gathered from a Korean city suggest that small entrepreneurship provides occupational niches to marginal migrant workers as well as an alternative to the bureaucratic channel of upward social mobility for a significant proportion of urban residents. These findings are interpreted by using the conception of occupational situs, which promises greater analytical utility in the study of developing societies than the unidimensional conception of occupational structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This paper reviews evidence concerning intracity trends in occupational status change among adult males from four studies of three cities--Boston, Philadelphia, and Poughkeepsie, New York for the mid-nineteenth century. The quality of the data and problems of cross-study comparability are discussed. Secondary analyses of the data indicate that rates of grossly defined vertical mobility and the transmission of status through adults' careers were stable among the nonmigrant male populations of the three cities for the periods of time in question. Data available for Boston indicate that the level of son's career beginnings had a substantial impact on his subsequent attainments and that the effect of father's occupation was largely interpreted by son's career-entry level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study whether employment history provides information about a worker's "work attitude", that is, the tendency to act cooperatively and reliably in the workplace. We conjecture that, holding all else equal, frequent job changes can indicate poor work attitude and that this information is transmitted through employment histories. We find support for this hypothesis across three studies that employ complementary laboratory, field, and survey experiments, as well as in labor market panel data. First, a tightly controlled laboratory labor market experiment demonstrates that prior employment information allows employers to screen for reliable and cooperative workers and that these workers obtain better employment outcomes. Secondly, we conduct a field experiment that varies the frequency of job changes in applicants' resumes and find that those with fewer job changes receive substantially more callbacks from prospective employers. Thirdly, a survey experiment with human resources professionals confirms that the resume manipulations in the field study create different perceptions of work attitude and that these largely account for the callback differences. Finally, we find evidence consistent with our hypothesized relationships in empirical labor market data. Our work highlights the potential importance of job history as a signal of work attitude in labor markets, and points to a potential cost of frequent job changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze occupational polarization within and across firms using a census of matched employer–employee panel data from Finland in the period of 2000–2014. As in most industrialized countries, the Finnish occupational distribution has polarized over the last decades. Using decomposition analysis, we find that jobs involving low-level service tasks increase mostly through the entry dynamics, while the high-level abstract task share increases largely within continuing firms. Worker-level occupational mobility points to some skill upgrading within continuing firms, while labor force entry and retirement contribute the polarizing trend. Instrumental variables (IVs) regressions confirm that this occupational restructuring is affected by the globalization of economic activity, including trade in goods and services, offshoring and outsourcing. For example, firms that outsource tasks abroad are more prone to lay off production workers, while domestic outsourcing leads to a reduction of both cognitive and service employees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industrial dynamics and labor mobility are two fields of economic research that have developed fast in recent years, but along what are essentially separate lines. This article shows that the processes those two fields deal with can be highly interdependent, and discusses the usefulness of, and the opportunity for, an integrated approach to the dynamics of industries and labor mobility. It concludes with a list of questions that inform a research agenda dedicated to such approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to define and measure numerical and functional labor flexibility at the firm level and investigate empirically the impact of each of these flexibility modes on performance and innovation measures as well as the inter-relationship between them. Our estimation equation contains, besides the classical production factors labor and physical capital, information and communication technologies (ICT) capital, human capital, variables for flexible organizational practices as well as measures for numerical labor flexibility. The empirical investigation is based on data for about 1400 Swiss firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While social mobility in advanced economies has received extensive scholarly attention, crucial knowledge gaps remain about the patterns and determinants of income, educational, and occupational mobility in developing countries. Focusing on intergenerational mobility, we find that estimates often differ greatly for the same country, depending on the concept and measure of mobility used, on variable constructions and on the data set utilized. There is also wide variation in mobility across regions and social groups. We discuss data and income and other variable measurement challenges when agriculture and the informal sector absorb most of the workforce, and illustrate why occupational classifications and widely used mobility measures may perform less well in such settings. Factors beyond those featuring in the literature on advanced economies are plausible determinants of social mobility, particularly of what we call moderate and large ascents (and descents), in developing country contexts. We highlight the lack of in-depth understanding of the multiple and often localized hurdles to such more pronounced progress. Similar knowledge gaps exist for large descents, which give rise to particularly profound concerns in low-income settings. We report and touch on the implications of suggestive findings of a disconnect between educational and occupational mobility. Innovative research requires critical engagement with theory and with methodology, identification, and data challenges that may overlap or deviate notably from those encountered in advanced economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study evaluates how authorization status shapes job transitions among Mexican and Central American immigrants in the United States. Specifically, using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation, we impute legal status and track employment histories for authorized and unauthorized workers, as well as native-born counterparts, in the less skilled labor market. We distinguish job moves based on changes in occupations and employers; and by linking workers' jobs to expected wages in their occupations, we are able to determine whether job transitions result in occupational upgrades or downgrades. Results reveal that unauthorized immigrants have lower adjusted rates of job mobility, consistent with arguments that their lack of work authorization "traps" their employment. Moreover, when unauthorized migrants do change jobs, their transitions are characterized by a process of occupational churning in which they cycle between similarly positioned jobs and have low rates of upward mobility, both within and across firms. We also test the possibility that the wage returns to job mobility are conditioned by legal status. Finally, we find that the penalties to job mobility associated with unauthorized status are more severe for women than men, potentially because of their high levels of segregation in socially isolating jobs. [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]

Using a set of user-generated data, we examine patterns in the careers of professional chefs. We argue that this is one of many cases in which careers must be understood as shaped by dual structures—the typical occupational structure within a firm, and the organization of firms in a larger field. We then demonstrate how career trajectories may be formalized as movement through a two-dimensional space defined by status in these structures. Building on previous ethnographic work finding that chefs understand the logic of their careers as involving repeated trade-offs between their occupational status (their rank within the kitchen) and organizational status (the status of the restaurant at which they work), we attempt to determine how different trajectories are associated with different outcomes. We find that, despite the somewhat random nature of entrance into the culinary profession, future top-tier chefs disproportionately begin their careers at high-status restaurants. Beyond their auspicious beginnings, these top-chefs-to-be also commonly devote their early careers to maximizing organizational status, forgoing promotions to higher kitchen ranks in favor of low-level jobs at more prestigious restaurants. By comparison, chefs destined to run lower-status restaurants tend to spend their early careers prioritizing rapid advancement within the kitchen, only pursuing jobs at more prestigious restaurants much later in their careers, with limited success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We estimate the costs of occupational mobility and quantify the relative importance of differences in task content as a component of total mobility costs. We use a novel approach based on a model of occupational choice that delivers a gravity equation linking worker flows to occupation characteristics and transition costs. Using data from the Current Population Survey and the Dictionary of Occupational Titles we find that task-specific costs account for no more than 15% of the total transition cost across most occupation pairs. Transition costs vary widely across occupations and, while increasing with the dissimilarity in the mix of tasks performed, are mostly accounted for by task-independent occupation-specific factors. The fraction of transition costs that can be attributed to task-related variables appears fairly stable over the 1994-2013 period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Job mobility offers opportunities for workers to obtain wage increases, but the returns on job changes differ considerably. We argue that part of this inequality results from a trade-off between occupational and regional mobility. Both mobility types offer alternative strategies for improving one's labor market position; however, each type also has unique restrictions. The high costs of regional mobility can thus induce occupational changes, even though the resulting human-capital devaluation leads to lower wage increases. We use linked retrospective life-course data for Germany (ALWA-ADIAB) and apply competing risks models to show that restrictions on one type of mobility drive individuals toward the other type of mobility. Using fixed-effects regressions, we then show that regional mobility yields higher wage improvements than occupational mobility does. We argue that restrictions on both types of mobility thus not only determine which type of mobility is chosen, thereby helping explain differential careers, but also contribute to inequality in wage trajectories due to differential returns on job mobility. The trade-off has explanatory power for the inequality between certain actors with different sets of mobility restrictions, such as parents and non-parents or employees in jobs with different skill demands, and it may also contribute to our better understanding of broader patterns of inequality—for instance, that caused by between-nation differences in job mobility. [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]

Previous research suggests that increasing job mobility leads to increasing economic inequality. In this study, I argue that an increase in job mobility can be inequality reducing, depending on the macro-structural context in which job changes become more frequent. I demonstrate empirical evidence by applying a new analytical approach to data from the South Korean economic crisis of the late 1990s. I find that rates of job transitions increased significantly during and after the economic crisis, and that more frequent movements between jobs ameliorated the rising trend in inequality: in other words, inequality in occupational status after the crisis would have been even greater had it not been for changes in the pattern of transitions between jobs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do apprenticeships convey mainly general or also firm- and occupation-specific human capital? Specific human capital may allow for specialization gains, but may also lead to allocative inefficiency due to mobility barriers. We analyse the case of Switzerland, which combines a comprehensive, high-quality apprenticeship system with a lightly regulated labour market. To assess human capital transferability after standardized firm-based apprenticeship training, we analyse inter-firm and occupational mobility and their effects on post-training wages. Using a longitudinal data set based on the PISA 2000 survey, we find high inter-firm and low occupational mobility within one year after graduation. Accounting for endogenous changes, we find a negative effect of occupation changes on wages, but no significant wage effect for firm changes. This indicates that occupation-specific human capital is an important component of apprenticeship training and that skills are highly transferable within an occupational field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using administrative panel data on the entire Danish population we document a new set of facts characterizing occupational mobility. For most occupations, mobility is U-shaped and directional: not only low but also high wage earners within an occupation have a particularly large probability of leaving their occupation, and the low (high) earners tend to switch to new occupations with lower (higher) average wages. Exceptions to this pattern of two-sided selection are occupations with steeply rising (declining) productivity, where mainly the lower (higher) paid workers within this occupation tend to leave. The facts conflict with several existing theories that are used to account for endogeneity in occupational choice, but it is shown analytically that the patterns are explained consistently within a theory of vertical sorting under absolute advantage that includes learning about workers' abilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]