New jobs, new joys? Monetary and non-monetary returns to occupational mobility

Worker mobility plays a central role in facilitating structural change and addressing labour shortages in labour markets. This paper examines the incentives for workers to change jobs or occupations by analyzing subsequent gains in earnings and job satisfaction. We distinguish between different types of mobility based on changes in occupational content and complexity. The results reveal that job mobility is positively associated with both wage and job satisfaction gains. While this relationship holds across most forms of mobility, the largest improvements are observed for horizontal mobility, i.e. a change of occupational content at the same level of occupational complexity, and diagonal mobility, i.e. a change of both occupational content and complexity. Our findings indicate substantial heterogeneities across worker groups: while women who change jobs experience wage growth comparable to men, women who remain in their job exhibit lower wage growth. For workers with a migration background, mobility primarily yields monetary benefits, whereas increases in job satisfaction are smaller than for non-migrant workers.