Stability and Change in 25‐Year Occupational Career Patterns

Abstract

The authors identify and describe occupational career patterns (OCPs) over 25 years for a single grade cohort of 170 rural high school graduates. OCP is the sequence of 1 person's work positions during the adolescent and adult years; a Stable OCP is experienced by persons engaged in the same type of occupation over their entire working career. More than one third of the respondents experienced Stable OCPs. Men experience greater OCP stability than women. OCP stability is linked to lower midlife career and job satisfaction, independent of the early experiences of socioeconomic status and gender.

Occupational career patterns over 30 years: predictors and outcomes

“…They found that men tend to have stable careers, while women more often experience career changes. Jepsen and Choudhuri (2001) also found that relatively more women show changing career patterns. Women in traditionally female occupations were less likely to change occupations.…”

“…On the other hand, people with "downward mobility" (in the sense of lower prestige and income level) had lighter workloads and better working hours, but also fewer promotion prospects. Jepsen and Choudhuri (2001) observed that people with changing occupational career patterns were more satisfied with their life courses and jobs in midlife than people with stable patterns. Furthermore, Kanchier and Unruh (1988) found that job changers were more satisfied with their position than nonchangers among managers in one large Canadian organization.…”

“…A second approach refers to direction (vertical vs. horizontal), where the focus is on the connection between occupational mobility and changes in occupational socioeconomic levels (Ng et al 2005;Roberts et al 2007;Schellenberg et al 2015). A third approach refers to stability (stable vs. changing occupations) (Jepsen and Choudhuri 2001).…”

“…Jepsen and Choudhuri (2001) applied optimal matching analysis and cluster analysis to identify homogenous classes of individuals characterized by similar patterns of occupational sequences and identified men's and women's occupational categories at every 5-year interval over 25 years. They found five patterns, such as "upward mobility patterns", "stable patterns", "downward mobility patterns", "fluctuating patterns" and "others".…”

“…Furthermore, studies have found that career patterns may play a role in terms of well-being (e.g. Jepsen and Choudhuri 2001). Therefore, empirical studies of OCP are very important in vocational and career guidance (Jepsen 1994;Savickas 1995).…”