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The number of dual career couples in academia is growing due to the increasing proportion of women with a doctoral degree and the greater propensity of women to choose another academic as their partner. At the same time, international mobility is required for career advancement in academia, creating challenges for dual career couples where both partners pursue careers. This paper has two objectives: (a) to raise the increasingly important issue of dual career couples in academia and the gendered effect that the pressure for mobility has on career advancement and work--life interference; and (b) to present examples of recently established dual career services of higher education institutions in Germany, Denmark and Switzerland, responding to the needs of the growing population of dual career couples. Due to long established practices of dual career services in the USA, the European examples will be compared with US practices. This paper raises the significance of considering dual career couples in institutional policies that aim for an internationally excellent and diversified academic workforce. It will appraise dual career services according to whether they reinforce or address gender inequalities and provide recommendations to higher education institutions interested in developing services and programmes for dual career couples.

This paper discusses the scope of the employee's voice in lifelong education decisions, with a focus on qualified assembly-line workers and professional development schemes allowing their upward mobility out of the assembly line. Using a capability approach, it investigates voice as part of people's agency. Beyond examining the channels that allow employees to have a say in training matters -- weak definition of voice -- it addresses voice as a process that participates in the conversion of the available training resources and opportunities into lifelong education achievements -- strong definition of voice. Comparing two subsidiaries of a multinational firm, one located in Germany and the other in France, we ask under what institutional and organizational conditions employees are able to express and then achieve what they value. In adopting a multi-level perspective which integrates qualitative data of an institutional, organizational and individual nature, we show how in France and Germany the worker's voice in training matters pertains to two different models of responsibility sharing. In Germany the worker's voice is associated with self-determination and self-care as a consequence of the externalization of lifelong education outside the confines of the firm; this results in a weak voice that requires personal or family resources in order to get converted into a strong voice. In France, where national legislation obliges firms to devote a percentage of the gross wage bill to training, companies have historically played an important role in the lifelong education of workers, so that until the country's last training reforms introducing a personal training account in 2014, the worker's voice was strongly shaped by organizational factors. Whether this voice is weak or strong depends upon the organizational strategy, processes and involvement in lifelong training.

In the past decades, income inequality has risen in most developed countries. There is growing interest among economists in international comparisons of economic and educational mobility. This is aided by the availability of internationally comparable, large-scale data. The present paper aims to make three contributions. First, we introduce the Japan Child Panel Survey (JCPS), the first longitudinal survey of school-age children that includes cognitive and non-cognitive measures, and plentiful household information. The JCPS was developed to measure dynamic inter-relationships among children's academic and social outcomes, their family background, and local policy and environment, in a way that allows comparison of the results with international data. Second, based on JCPS data, we present selected results of the dynamics of inequality in multiple indicators of children's educational and behavioral outcomes. We found that changes in cognitive achievement across parental income groups, the degree of mobility of cognitive test scores, and the correlation between the difficulty score and parental education in Japan are similar to those of other countries, such as the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and Germany. Finally we discuss issues underlying the globalization of education research based on our experiences with the JCPS. We discuss reasons and strategies for further globalization of education research in Japan, and propose suggestions as to how Japanese education research can move toward better international collaboration, particularly in research on economic and educational mobility.

This paper deals with the migration motives of German and Polish final semester students and university graduates in the partner cities of Bielefeld (GER) and Rzeszów (PL), who are on the threshold of their professional careers. The survey presented here was motivated by the question: are the current migration motives of highly-skilled graduates still economically driven or have migration motives changed due to the increasing education level of migrants and new migration patterns, and will be described in this article. The survey provides insights into emigration destinations favoured by graduates from the two cities. In addition, the importance of informal networks for a migration-related job search was analysed. The survey's accomplished results contribute, at a micro-level, to the broad literature and to migration theories at macro and meso-level. In times of high (youth) unemployment in several European regions as well as skills shortages and demand for highly-skilled workers in other European regions, new approaches on migration motives are required. The content of this study can help destination countries and regions reflect on their attraction strategy for highly-skilled workers and set new incentives based on an individual view.

Studies of academic achievement and educational and occupational mobility constitute mainstream educational sociology. The key questions and main findings within these research traditions are identified, emphasizing both stable cross-national generalizations as well as cross-national contexts which lead to variable outcomes. To illustrate, family background is clearly related to academic achievement cross-nationally, but there is much cross-national variation in the relationship between achievement and aspirations. A comparative cross-national perspective adds to our understanding of how and why standard educational variables are related to one another. To revitalize the sociology of education, however, requires going beyond its established research traditions. In this spirit the second part of this paper explores questions about the changing logic of citizenship and its "terms of inclusion" implications for schooling. I also examine the rise of valorized diversity and its influence on the changing character of universities. (Contains 1 note.)

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyse the effect of an increase in the relative supply of immigrants on natives' task reallocation, with a focus on Germany. Specifically, it investigates whether natives, as a response to increased immigration, re-specialise in communication-intensive occupations, where they arguably have a comparative advantage due to language proficiency. Design/methodology/approach: The analysis uses regional data from the German Labour Force Survey between 2002 and 2014. To derive data on job tasks requirements, it employs the US Department of Labor's O*NET database, the results of which are tested through a sensitivity analysis using the European Working Condition Survey and the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies data sets. Findings: The paper finds that indeed German workers respond to increasing immigration by shifting their task supply and providing more communication relative to manual tasks. Importantly, the decrease in the supply of communication tasks is stronger and more robust than the increase in the supply of manual tasks, pointing to a potential displacement effect taking place between natives and immigrants, alongside task reallocation. This would suggest that countries with relatively more rigid labour markets are less responsive to immigration shocks. Moreover, it suggests that labour market rigidity can minimise the gains from immigration and exacerbate employment effects. Originality/value: The paper not only investigates task reallocation as a result of immigration in a different institutional context and labour market functioning, but the results feed into broader policy and scholarly discussions on the effects of immigration, including questions about how the institutional context affects labour market adjustment to immigration, worker occupational mobility in a more rigid labour markets and the fine balance needed between flexibility and rigidity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an extensive analysis of the wage effects of inter-regional mobility within Germany. Comparing skilled region-type movers with skilled non-migratory establishment movers we find clear evidence of an additional effect of inter-regional mobility which becomes fully effective after three years. The highest returns are obtained by young workers and by rural-urban movers. The introduction of fixed district and establishment effects tackles the notorious nuisance of regional price-level differences and reveals that the mobility returns can be decomposed into roughly equal contributions of human capital accumulation and search gains. Resumen Este artículo proporciona un amplio análisis de los efectos salariales de la movilidad interregional en Alemania. Al comparar a la mano de obra cualificada que se traslada entre tipos de regiones con la también cualificada no migratoria que solo se traslada entre empleos, encontramos pruebas claras de un efecto adicional de la movilidad interregional que se hace plenamente efectivo al cabo de tres años. Los retornos más elevados los obtienen los trabajadores jóvenes y los que se trasladan de medio rural al urbano. La introducción de efectos fijos por distrito y empleo contrarrestan el notorio fastidio de las diferencias regionales del nivel de precios y revela que los retornos a la movilidad pueden atribuirse más o menos a partes iguales entre la acumulación de capital humano y la mejora en la búsqueda de empleo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose -- This paper seeks to shed further light on the native-migrant differences in economic outcomes. The aim is to investigate labor market reintegration, patterns of job search, and reservation wages across unemployed migrants and natives in Germany. Design/methodology/approach -- The paper is based on the IZA Evaluation Dataset, a recently collected rich survey of a representative sample of entrants into unemployment in Germany. The data include a large number of migration variables, allowing us to adapt a recently developed concept of ethnic identity: the ethnosizer. The authors analyze these data using the OLS technique as well as probabilistic regression models. Findings -- The results indicate that separated migrants have a relatively slow reintegration into the labor market. It can be argued that this group exerts a relatively low search effort and that it has reservation wages which are moderate, yet still above the level which would imply similar employment probabilities as other groups of migrants. Research limitations/implications -- The findings indicate that special attention heeds to be paid by policy makers to various forms of social and cultural integration, as it has significant repercussions on matching in the labor market. Originality/value -- The paper identifies a previously unmapped relationship between ethnic identity and labor market outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the basis of inter-cohort comparisons, this paper describes patterns of intra-generational occupational mobility in Germany and their long-term trends since World War II. It also presents conceptual links between individual mobility and developments of inequality along the life course, with a special focus on the question of the extent to which employment careers are characterised by specific forms of cumulative advantage and disadvantage. Finally, it is asked how intra-generational developments are related to inter-generational social mobility. The paper also discusses how mobility patterns can be linked to specific institutions which - together with labour market conditions - are crucial determinants of the development of inequality within a cohort. In its empirical part, the paper presents evidence from cohort-specific analyses based on life-course data from a broad range of West German birth cohorts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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We investigate how apprenticeship training affects the early career mobility and earnings profiles of young apprentices in Germany. The heterogeneous quality and nature (whether general or firm specific) of training across firms is expected to be reflected in the post-apprenticeship mobility and earning patterns of young workers. In this paper, we argue that a simple model of training and labour turnover can explain such patterns. Specifically, assuming that job changes are associated with a loss of accumulated firm-specific skills, the model predicts that although movers initially experience a productivity loss, their earnings grow at a faster rate than those of stayers. As job changes become more costly the longer a worker stays with the training firm, later movers experience a larger reduction in their earnings compared with direct movers. Estimated selectivity-corrected earnings equations for movers and stayers, based on data from the German Socioeconomic Panel (GSOEP), support the predictions of the model and highlight important differences in earnings profiles and mobility patterns by apprenticeship firm size. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to assess intergenerational occupational mobility in Germany. Using data from the Socio-Economic Panel, we find a high persistence of occupational choices across fathers and children. To separate effects related to parental advice and influence (nurture) from genetic factors (nature), we determine the persistence separately for children who grew up with their biological fathers and those who did not. The results suggest that nurture-related effects explain a significant fraction of the observed correlation of fathers' and children's occupational choices. We discuss policy implications that follow from the analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to standard human capital theory, firm-financed training cannot be explained if the skills obtained are general in nature. Nevertheless, in German-speaking countries, firms invest heavily in apprenticeship training although the skills are assumed to be general. In our paper, we study the extent to which apprenticeship training is general at all and how specificity of training may be defined based on Lazear’s skill-weights approach. We build occupation-specific skill-weights and find that the more specific the skill portfolio in an occupation, the higher the net costs firms have to bear for these apprenticeship training occupations and, at the same time, the smaller the probability of an occupational change during an employee’s entire career. Due to the new definition of occupational specificity, we thus find that apprenticeship training – previously assessed as general training – is very heterogeneous in its specificity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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In this paper we examine the impact of temporary work on two dimensions of social inequality: income and career mobility. Additionally, we are taking a comparative perspective on this subject by comparing Germany and the UK. To investigate the effects of temporary work we use data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and the British Household Panel Study on non-self-employed respondents. The results show that temporary work does influence the system of social inequality: we found wage penalties and an increased probability of severe negative effects on the working careers of temporarily employed persons in both countries (net of education, age, and a variety of other covariates). Thus we can conclude that temporary employment represents a substantial socio-economic risk for employees. Most importantly, this holds true for both the German and the British case, two quite distinct labour market regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theory of career mobility (Sicherman and Galor, Journal of Political Economy, 98 (1), 169-92, 1990) claims that wage penalties for overeducated workers are compensated by better promotion prospects. Sicherman (Journal of Labour Economics, 9 (2), 101-22, 1991) was able to confirm this theory in an empirical study using panel data. However, the only retest using panel data so far (Robst, Eastern Economic Journal, 21, 539-50, 1995) produced rather ambiguous results. In the present paper, random effects models to analyse relative wage growth are estimated using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel. It is found that overeducated workers in Germany have markedly lower relative wage growth rates than adequately educated workers. The results cast serious doubt on whether the career mobility model is able to explain overeducation in Germany. The plausibility of the results is supported by the finding that overeducated workers have less access to formal and informal on-the-job training, which is usually found to be positively correlated with wage growth even when controlling for selectivity effects (Pischke, Journal of Population Economics, 14, 523-48, 2001). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although most middle managers in Germany continue to follow traditional career paths within their firms, there are alternative job opportunities other than staying with one employer for their whole career. Using data from a unique dataset of managers in the German chemical sector, we find that managerial employees benefit from higher-than-average increases in fixed salary payments when changing firms, but that these mobile employees suffer with regard to variable payments, such as cash bonus and other payments (e. g. stocks options or special payments). Thus, job movers have to trade off variable payments for higher fixed salaries when changing firms. This paper also shows that job movers differ considerably in terms of both increased fixed salaries and decreased bonus payments. Initial fixed salary premiums are much more pronounced if managers switch to a larger firm or to the same functional area or line of business. Notably, job movers suffer from reduced bonus payments, especially in overall economic and/or industry-specific peak times. Our study adds to the discussion on negative monetary consequences of inter-firm mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Changes in the size of establishments - as opposed to the turnover of workers across a given set of jobs - account for a non-negligible component of gross workers flows. Based on a rich database of establishment-level employment records in western Germany, this paper analyses the magnitude and determinants of job turnover and its relation with labour turnover. Consistently with findings from other countries, it is shown that job turnover is mainly the byproduct of the dispersion of establishment-level outcomes within any industry rather than of job reallocation across different sectors. The role played by disturbances to consumer preferences over differentiated products is also assessed in an attempt to shed some light on the determinants of this tremendous heterogeneity of establishment-level employment changes within each industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In interdisciplinary debates, it is often assumed that changes in job autonomy in the course of digitalisation will be similar for all employees, even across task domains. Some authors postulate the emergence of a "digital Taylorism", while others suggest that the digital transformation enables more "digital self-determination". Based on a large-scale survey of employees in Germany, this article quantitatively examines both assumptions, with a particular focus on possible differences across job tasks. The results point to a systematic inequality between the task domains considered: Knowledge-related tasks seem to be associated with increased "digital self-determination", while the results for manufacturing and service tasks tend towards a pattern of "digital Taylorism". Overall, the debate needs to go beyond discussing possible future scenarios and address the complex links between job quality, digital technologies and tasks that are already changing the world of work today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the impact of notions of "free labour" on industrial conflicts in postwar Europe. More specifically, it compares worker resistance against the (re-) introduction of labour conscription in two coal basins: the Ruhr in Germany and the Hainaut in Belgium. As coal was vital to the reconstruction effort, governments in both countries issued decrees that either compelled workers to accept a job in the coal sector or prohibited miners from changing jobs. If mobilisation civile in Belgium and Arbeitsverpflichtung in Germany were similarly ineffective in addressing the fundamental problems plaguing the coal sector, miner resistance against these schemes took very different forms in the two regions. In the Hainaut, the reintroduction of wartime constraints triggered a strike wave that was couched in a language of worker rights and freedoms. In the Ruhr, workers representatives steered clear from such ideological arguments, but saw the labour conscripts vote with their feet and abandon the coal mines en masse. In linking these differences to their pre-war and wartime legacies, the article draws attention to the longue durée of controversies over (un)free labour in democratic Western Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We compare occupational mobility in Germany and Britain and focus on the effects of the German dual vocational system. Based on a comparison of mobility rates for different occupations within each country and between the two countries, we find that mobility is particularly low in German apprenticeship occupations and conclude that the dual system impedes occupational changes. However, German mobility rates are also lower in non-apprenticeship occupations, and only a small part of the overall low mobility rate in Germany (almost three times lower than in Britain) can be attributed to the apprenticeship system. We conclude that institutions such as employment protection are more important for explaining cross-country differences in mobility. Moreover we find evidence for the claim that occupational mismatching at the beginning of working lives is more widespread in Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyse how an entry regulation that imposes a mandatory educational standard affects entry into self-employment and occupational mobility. We exploit German reunification as a natural experiment and identify regulatory effects by comparing differences between regulated and unregulated occupations in East Germany with the corresponding differences in West Germany after reunification. Consistent with our expectations, we find that entry regulation reduces entry into self-employment and occupational mobility after reunification more in regulated occupations in East Germany than in West Germany. Our findings are relevant for transition or emerging economies as well as for mature market economies requiring large structural changes after unforeseen economic shocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies have shown that voluntary job-to-job changes have a positive effect on wage growth. This paper argues that the impact of a job change on wage mobility depends on the position in the wage distribution. Using panel data from the UK and Germany, we show that a change of employer results into a wage increase only for the low-paid workers. Within-firm job changes produce, on the average, moderate wage gains for the low-paid workers in Britain, but have no effect in Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The macro evidence of increased adjustment pressure since the early 1970s suggests that job mobility should have increased. Hence, retrospective and spell data from the German Socio-Economic Panel are combined in order to test the hypothesis that job stability for German workers declined between 1974 and 1994. Using count data regression models in which we control for labour market experience, various demographic factors, and occupation, we find that job stability did not decrease, but if anything increased, between 1974 and 1994. Our finding suggests that labour market inflexibility is an important factor in explaining the European unemployment problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The career mobility model suggests that overeducated workers are more prone to take up on-the-job training, to climb up the career ladder, or to leave to professions more suitable to their educational level. Our empirical analysis, using the German SOEP, confirms this theory for Germany. Comparing adequately qualified and overqualified workers in jobs that require the same level of formal qualification indicates that overeducated workers have a higher probability to take up on-the-job training and have a higher probability to move to jobs that better match their educational level. Furthermore, we find that overeducated workers experience higher wage growth than their adequately educated colleagues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Changes in wages and other job characteristics during an individual's career are often the result of job mobility. Using a sample of Bavarian university graduates, this work analyses the effects that employer changes have on men's and women's wages. For this, employer changes are grouped into three categories in order to account for different circumstances. Partly in contrast to previous research, the results show significant and positive effects of job mobility, irrespective of gender and of the type of employer change. However, financial returns are lower in case of changes for personal reasons and – at least when absolute instead of relative changes are analysed – for women. This can be explained largely by different circumstances which personal employer changes occur in and which women experience. The results are discussed with respect to the specifics of the German labour market structure and to gender segregation on the labour market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies how insurance from progressive taxation improves the matching of workers to occupations. We propose an equilibrium dynamic assignment model to illustrate how social insurance encourages mobility. Workers experiment to find their best occupational fit in a process filled with uncertainty. Risk aversion and limited earnings insurance induce workers to remain in unfitting occupations. We estimate the model using microdata from the United States and Germany. Higher earnings uncertainty explains the U.S. higher mobility rate. When workers in the United States enjoy Germany's higher progressivity, mobility rises. Output and welfare gains are large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from the British Household Panel Survey for 1991-99 and the German Socio-Economic Panel for 1984-99, the authors investigate job mobility and estimate the returns to tenure and experience. Job mobility was higher in the United Kingdom than in Germany. Returns to experience also seem to have been substantially higher in the United Kingdom, where the wage gain associated with ten years of labor market experience was around 80%, compared to 35% in Germany. The low returns to labor market experience in Germany appear to have been accountable to one group of workers: those with apprenticeship training, who tended to receive fairly high starting wages but to experience relatively low wage growth thereafter. Wage growth due to labor market experience was similar between the two countries for the other skill groups. Returns to tenure were close to zero in both countries. [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]

Recent decades have seen a dramatic expansion in the educational attainment and occupational opportunities of German women. Both the educational and occupational positions of the mothers and those of their daughters are continuously changing across cohorts. Our study aims to detect the probability of daughters to experience maternal-line intergenerational educational and occupational mobility. Using new data from the National Educational Panel Study of adult cohorts, we analyse successive cohorts of German women born between 1944 and 1984. We demonstrate that the relation between mothers’ and daughters’ educational and occupational career has changed over time. Maternal-line female mobility has decreased over cohorts. Our results also reveal that the relationship between educational careers and female job mobility has changed. The tertiary level of education has become more relevant across cohorts in preventing downward intergenerational mobility and it has become a prerequisite for taking part in the completion for upward intergenerational mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article, we focus on the potential development of the German labour market. For this purpose, we developed a forecasting system that considers both supply and demand by occupational fields and qualifications and that relies on consistent datasets, exogenous assumptions and systematic correlations. We present the key impacts for our forecasting system and highlight the effects of different assumptions (scenarios) exemplified on our demand model. On the supply side, we point out how different behaviours on the individual level influence the structure of development of the supply of skilled labour. Keeping the possibility of those various potential futures in mind, we conclude with an outlook on potential skilled labour shortages in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on expatriates indicates that substantial differences exist within internationally active employees. Several typologies of expatriates have been suggested to account for this diverseness. However, empirical evidence on the accuracy of these classification schemes is scarce. On the basis of these research efforts, we introduce a data-based taxonomy of internationally mobile managers. By means of sequence analysis, we derive four career patterns from the curriculi vitae of 202 German managers. These patterns are built on the dimensions mobility and duration of the stays abroad. We further show that these patterns differ with regard to various individual and organizational variables. On the basis of these findings, we argue that expatriation career management practices and responsibilities need to be differentiated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Previous research on graduate employment points to cross-national similarities regarding the comparative advantage of higher education, but also to quality differences in initial employment positions. This article asks what makes for a good start after higher education and provides an institutional perspective on the specific "production mechanisms" of graduate career mobility in different countries. It argues that the occupational specificity of higher education is vital for establishing either a close or loose link to the labor market, and, accordingly, for shaping early labor market careers. To test this assumption empirically, it analyzes how the organization of professional and management training influences graduate career mobility in two countries that are significantly different in their degree of occupational specificity--Great Britain and Germany. The institutional analysis points to a tight link between higher education and work in Germany and a loose one in Britain. However, the application of discrete time piece-wise constant hazard models to the German Socioeconomic Panel and two British cohort studies (the National Child Development Study and the British Cohort Study 1970) reveals that the picture is more complex than initially assumed. The degree of occupational specificity can explain only the German pattern, where graduates are experiencing more job continuity and higher employment chances in professional and managerial positions than their British counterparts. In Britain, the more turbulent transition from higher education to work depends on a mixture of occupation-specific training and demographic factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine administrative data on young German workers and their employers to study the long-term effects of an early career job loss. To account for nonrandom sorting of workers into firms with different turnover rates and for selective job mobility, we use changes over time in firm- and age-specific labor demand as an instrument for displacement. We find that wage losses of young job losers are initially 15 percent, but drop to zero within five years. Only workers leaving very large establishments suffer persistent losses. A comparison of estimators implies that initial sorting, negative selection, and voluntary job mobility biases ordinary least squares estimates toward finding permanent negative effects of early displacements. (JEL J13, J23, J24, J62, J63, M53). [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]

This article discusses a study which examined the dynamics of occupational changes in the context of labor market trends in Germany between 1992 and 2002. Occupational changes are defined as job changes within or between firms and entries into new jobs. The study focuses on employed persons who changed jobs or took up a new job in the 12 months prior to responding to the survey in 1992, 1997 and 2002. The study also describes the job search strategies and the information sources used to find the new jobs and presents the respondents' assessment of the new jobs compared with the old. The data on which these analyses are based are taken from the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) survey. Two major socio-demographic trends have altered the structure of the labor market over the ten years: the population of working age has continued to age significantly and the increase in the share of women in the working-age population.

The mobility effect of general and specific training is a key issue in the debate on the design of educational systems. Using data from two retrospective life-history surveys, we compare general school-based vocational training and specific apprenticeship training with regard to inter-firm, inter-occupational and inter-industrial mobility. The results show that workers with school-based degrees display greater occupational mobility, while no difference in firm and industrial mobility can be discerned. This suggests that apprenticeships do not eliminate job search at labor market entry, that they reduce occupational mobility, and that responsiveness to structural change is similar under both training systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The analysis of intergenerational mobility has primarily used measures of social position that are functions of an individual's occupation. Occupation-based models of social mobility, however, have limitations that arguably have grown in recent decades. Meta-analysis of available evidence for Sweden, western Germany, and the United States concerning occupational mobility, household income mobility, job displacement, union dissolution, and poverty dynamics shows the limitations of the individual-level occupation-based career-trajectory approach to life course mobility. This article develops an alternative formulation at the household level, which focuses on cross-national variation in the extent to which societal institutions influence the rate of events with the potential to change a household's life conditions via the manipulation of incentives for mobility-generating events, and the extent to which they mitigate the consequences of these events through social insurance. The combination of these institutional processes produces the distinctive characteristics of the mobility regimes of these countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the restructuring of the employment system in post-communist societies, taking East Germany after 1989 as an example. Due to the German Democratic Republic's 'accession' to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1990, the transitional process here was a particular one. More than other post-communist transformations, the East German case is seen as a prototype of a 'simple' adaptation process. In this study we explore whether such a simple adaptation process actually occurred, with the allocation mechanisms used in West Germany being transferred to East Germany. We investigate how different kinds of human resources accumulated and exhibited before 1989 helped to promote individual career mobility after 1989. One of the central and surprising results of the analyses is that individual assets (such as mobility competencies acquired under the state-socialist regime) were of only secondary importance for success and failure in the unified labour market. [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]