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Occupational Mobility Across Years, Decades and a Century

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  • Sekyu Choi

    (Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona)

Abstract

In this paper I document occupational mobility comparing the experiences of cohorts living one century apart: those captured in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics from 1968 to 2000 and a longitudinal census sample of individuals observed between 1880 and 1930. Considering different levels of aggregation with respect to occupations, as well as different definitions of what an occupation is, I uncover several facts which are remarkably stable in time: (i) occupational mobility is higher for younger workers, (ii) it is closely related to geographical mobility and (iii) over the life-cycle, individuals tend towards occupations with high cognitive, non-routine task requirements and away from manual-heavy tasks. A major difference between cohorts is the fate of geographical movers: for the 1880 cohort, interstate migrants were characterized with worse occupational outcomes than stayers, while the opposite is true for the 1968 cohort; additionally, the data shows that routine occupations are more prominent for the 1968 cohort.

Suggested Citation

  • Sekyu Choi, 2014. "Occupational Mobility Across Years, Decades and a Century," 2014 Meeting Papers 1154, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    • Handle: RePEc:red:sed014:1154
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    4. David H. Autor & Frank Levy & Richard J. Murnane, 2003. "The skill content of recent technological change: an empirical exploration," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue nov.
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