Worker Beliefs about Occupational Mobility

Pascal Heß () and Armando Miano ()
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Pascal Heß: Institute for Employment Research (IAB) and IZA@LISER
Armando Miano: University of Naples Federico II and CSEF, https://csef.it/people/armando-miano/

CSEF Working Papers from Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: Occupational mobility; Information frictions; Job search; Beliefs; Automation; AI. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D83 D91 J01 J24 J62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-07-28
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sef:csefwp:792

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