Feminization, ageing and occupational change in Europe in the last 25 years

This paper presents new evidence on the interaction between demographic and occupational change in Europe over the last 25 years. We use data from the European Union Labour Force Survey covering six European countries to make the results representative of the different EU institutional families. The analysis is based on a cross-sectional comparison between the population and employment distributions in 1995 and 2019. This strategy allows us to study the changing demographic dynamics, which have brought a more feminised, aged and educated working population, in a context of structural employment change, where higher job polarisation or occupational upgrading are the main patterns. The results indicate that the increasing female participation has been accompanied by job polarisation, driven especially by the expansion of low-paid jobs among women. Although educational upgrading was particularly relevant for females, a multinomial logistic regression shows that occupational returns to education have declined more for women than men. Finally, despite the fact that the share of young (old) workers has decreased (increased), the occupational profile has changed similarly for both groups and the gender-based differences remain regardless of their age.