Occupational and Job Mobility in the US

Abstract

We propose a new methodology to measure and to study worker mobility across occupations and jobs in US Census data at the monthly frequency. Our approach builds on two main ideas. First, we use the longitudinal dimension of matched monthly CPS files to evaluate each occupational transition in the context of the transitioning worker's employment history over four consecutive months. Second, we rely on the post-1994 Dependent Coding of occupations, and additional filters, to (in) validate potentially suspicious transitions. When we apply our methodology to the 1979-2004 period, we obtain new estimates of the average levels and time series patterns of these labor market transitions. We find that about 3.5% of workers employed in two consecutive months report different 3-digit occupations. This flow is procyclical, mildly rising in the 1980s and falling after 1995, faster after the 2001 recession. Based on the results regarding occupational mobility, we can impute information to the numerous missing answers to the job-to-job (or Employer-to-Employer, EE) survey question. We revise upward current estimates of the average EE rate since 1994, to 3.2% per month. This rate mildly declines in 1994-1997, mildly rises in 1997-2000 and falls significantly and continuously in 2001-2004. This pattern suggests a very persistent negative impact of the latest two recessions on jobto-job mobility.

Labour Market Mobility in Nordic Welfare States

“…This has been the case in earlier studies as well. Mobility is usually observed to be higher during an economic upturn and low unemployment (Virjo et al 2007, Aho and Virjo 2009, Furåker and Berglund 2009, Moscarini and Vella 2002, Kambourov and Manovskii 2004, Isaoglu 2006, Frederiksen and Westergaard-Nielsen 2007, Moscarini and Thomsson 2007. With these results in mind, it is reasonable to assume that the overall mobility levels studied here have declined strongly after the last year in our data (2006) because of the financial crisis.…”

How Bad is Involuntary Part-Time Work?

“…This figure seems relatively high, yet it is in line with estimates of measurement error in other labor market transitions computed using the monthly CPS. For example, Moscarini and Thomsson (2007) report that the unadjusted occupational mobility rate in the monthly CPS files for the years 1979-1993 is 34%, whereas the adjusted rate is less than 4%. Second, and interestingly, we find that the amount of noise is roughly identical for I → V and V → I transitions, although the levels of the raw transition probabilities are very different.…”

Mobility across firms and occupations among graduates from apprenticeship

“…1 During the time period of 1979-2006 monthly occupational mobility rates in the US were at about 3.5% of overall employment -even higher than the 3.2% average rate of job mobility across firms (Moscarini and Thomsson, 2007). For Denmark, Groes et al (forthcoming) report that the annual occupational mobility rate lies close to 20%.…”

“…The high mobility after graduation is a particularly interesting case to analyze. On the one hand, a change across firms involves the loss of the training investment for the training firm (Wolter 1 Among others, see for the US: Topel and Ward (1992), Neal (1999), Moscarini and Thomsson (2007), Manovskii (2008, 2009) Longhi and Brynin (2010).…”