The UK`s Equal Opportunities Commission has recently drawn attention to the `hidden brain drain` when women working part-time are employed in jobs below their level of educational attainment and/or previous experience. These inferences were based on self-reporting. We give an objective and quantitative analysis of the nature of occupational change as women make the transition between full-time and part-time work. In order to analyse down-grading we construct an occupational classification which supports a ranking of occupations by the average level of qualification of those employed there on a full-time basis. We note that the incidence (and by implication the availability) of part-time work differs across occupations, and that occupational concentration is more acute for part-time work. Using a large sample of panel observations over the period 1991-2001 we show that women moving from full- to part-time work are approximately twice as likely to move down as up the occupational ladder, while those moving from part-time back to full-time work are twice as likely to be moving up than down the ranking. These effects are particularly marked when a change of employer is involved. Not all women are equally at risk of downgrading. It is particularly likely among women in management positions; over one-third of women in managerial or high-skilled clerical/administrative jobs downgrade when they move into part-time employment. But women in some occupations with higher specific skill requirements and where employees may have a stronger sense of vocation, notably teaching and nursing, are much less likely to experience downgrading. Nonetheless, 20% of teachers and nurses who change employer and switch into part-time work move downwards. These findings indicate a loss of economic efficiency through the underutilisation of the skills of many of the women who work part-time.
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Paper provided by University of Oxford, Department of Economics in its series Economics Series Working Papers with number
302.
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