Worker Beliefs about Occupational Mobility

We study how employed workers perceive and respond to opportunities for occupational mobility. Using a large-scale survey of 4,500 full-time workers in Germany, linked with administrative employment data, we measure workers’ beliefs about the transferability of their skills, the similarity of alternative occupations to theirs, the benefits— potential earnings—and costs—retraining and licensing requirements—of moving to other occupations. We also capture respondents’ beliefs about exposure of their own and alternative occupations to automation and AI. The results reveal that workers are imperfectly informed about opportunities in other occupations: they systematically underestimate task similarity and wages in alternative occupations while overestimating the need for retraining or licensing. These misperceptions are more severe for bluecollar workers and for workers in commercial and administrative occupations, and are strongly negatively correlated with intentions to seek jobs in other occupations. Randomized information treatments providing data on wages, retraining requirements, and displacement risk meaningfully alter workers’ beliefs and mobility intentions, even nine months after the intervention.