The Costs of Occupational Mobility: An Aggregate Analysis

Abstract

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 which 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.JEL Codes: J62, J24. . Financial support from CLSRN and SSHRC is gratefully acknowledged. We thank Dirk Krueger and four anonymous referees for extensive comments that significantly improved the paper. We are grateful to Christopher Nekarda for facilitating access to the matched CPS data and to Todd Schoellman for generously sharing his occupation licensing database. We also thank Nicole , and seminar participants at various universities and workshops for insightful comments and suggestions. Carlos Sanchez and Lijing (Emily) Wang provided valuable research assistance at different stages of this project.

Long‐Run Patterns of Labour Market Polarization: Evidence from German Micro Data

“…These groups also experience an increase in the propensity for non‐employment and for non‐routine manual (NRM) employment. Cortes and Gallipoli () examine worker flows between occupations for the United States and show that task content heterogeneity, between occupational pairs, has a significant impact on transition costs. While they stress that the majority of mobility costs are not related to tasks, costs related to task differences lead to lower levels of occupational mobility than would otherwise be observed.…”

Occupational transitions

“…The need to assess such distances is motivated by evidence showing that wider skill distance across occupations reduces mobility and occupational switches (see e.g. Gathmann and Schoenberg, 2010;Cortes and Gallipoli, 2018;and Robinson, 2018).…”

Police Reorganization and Crime: Evidence from Police Station Closures

“…18 Besides the empirical analysis of reported crime cases and the relation to deterrence and incapacitation, we can further test whether the policy change induces non-criminals to become criminal or whether the observed effects are driven by already active criminals using data on suspects. Interpreting crime as an occupational choice, this relates to the discussion of costs of occupational mobility (Cortes and Gallipoli, 2018). If the policy change induces new criminals, this could be interpreted as lower levels of deterrence and that returns to crime are higher than labor market returns minus occupational mobility costs.…”