%0 Report %1 grunow2007 %A Grunow, Daniela %A Mayer, Karl Ulrich %C Yale %D 2007 %K career course gender life mobility occupation sociology tfbf %N Working Paper 2007-03 %T How Stable are Working Lives? Occupational Stability and Mobility in West Germany 1940s -- 2005 %U http://www.yale.edu/ciqle/CIQLEPAPERS/CIQLEWP2007-3.pdf %X In recent years, a growing number of empirical studies have challenged societal diagnoses of increasingly flexible work life patterns. The paper presents the first long-term cohort trend analysis of early career occupational mobility for West Germany that covers the entire period from the mid-1940s up to 2005. Drawing on the retrospective surveys from the German Life History Study, cohorts 1930 to 1971, we investigate whether male and female employees have in general become more occupationally mobile across cohorts, and to what extent educational expansion, changes in skill demands, labor market restructuring and women’s increased labor force attachment may account for the mobility patterns observed. We tackle occupational mobility from two theoretical perspectives, first, as a form of social mobility that is associated with matching persons to positions at labor market entry and as a reaction to shifts on the demand side of labor; second, from the perspective of dispositions to acquire and to maintain occupational identities. We investigate whether individual experiences of ‘waiting loops’ after apprenticeship and employment interruptions weaken the binding power of occupational pathways, and how this has changed across cohorts, with lessening commitments of firms to their apprentices, increasing unemployment risk and the rise in multiple occupational training. We find that the transition from occupational training to work seems to be pretty much intact. The majority enters the labor market by taking up the occupation they were trained for, and this share has increased rather than declined across cohorts, and despite the spread of gaps. For those who have entered the labor market, the binding power of occupation seems to be bound up with employment continuity. While direct occupational mobility has actually declined across cohorts, occupational mobility that follows any kind of employment interruption has increased.

@techreport{grunow2007, abstract = {In recent years, a growing number of empirical studies have challenged societal diagnoses of increasingly flexible work life patterns. The paper presents the first long-term cohort trend analysis of early career occupational mobility for West Germany that covers the entire period from the mid-1940s up to 2005. Drawing on the retrospective surveys from the German Life History Study, cohorts 1930 to 1971, we investigate whether male and female employees have in general become more occupationally mobile across cohorts, and to what extent educational expansion, changes in skill demands, labor market restructuring and women’s increased labor force attachment may account for the mobility patterns observed. We tackle occupational mobility from two theoretical perspectives, first, as a form of social mobility that is associated with matching persons to positions at labor market entry and as a reaction to shifts on the demand side of labor; second, from the perspective of dispositions to acquire and to maintain occupational identities. We investigate whether individual experiences of ‘waiting loops’ after apprenticeship and employment interruptions weaken the binding power of occupational pathways, and how this has changed across cohorts, with lessening commitments of firms to their apprentices, increasing unemployment risk and the rise in multiple occupational training. We find that the transition from occupational training to work seems to be pretty much intact. The majority enters the labor market by taking up the occupation they were trained for, and this share has increased rather than declined across cohorts, and despite the spread of gaps. For those who have entered the labor market, the binding power of occupation seems to be bound up with employment continuity. While direct occupational mobility has actually declined across cohorts, occupational mobility that follows any kind of employment interruption has increased.}, added-at = {2009-07-23T11:16:57.000+0200}, address = {Yale}, author = {Grunow, Daniela and Mayer, Karl Ulrich}, biburl = {https://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/27f51c8c3e965db3784acc80cefb718b7/neongod}, institution = {Center for Research on Inequalities and the Life Course, Yale University}, interhash = {43e3e9bdf0978d89fa3d114ec02970ee}, intrahash = {7f51c8c3e965db3784acc80cefb718b7}, keywords = {career course gender life mobility occupation sociology tfbf}, number = {Working Paper 2007-03}, timestamp = {2009-07-23T11:16:57.000+0200}, title = {How Stable are Working Lives? Occupational Stability and Mobility in West Germany 1940s -- 2005}, url = {http://www.yale.edu/ciqle/CIQLEPAPERS/CIQLEWP2007-3.pdf}, year = 2007 }