Employment in the Context of Structural Change: Same Occupations, Different Sectors

Thilo Kroeger and Dominik Boddin

DIW Weekly Report, 2026, vol. 16, issue 32, 243-249

Abstract: The loss of manufacturing jobs in Germany is often viewed with great concern. While many manufacturing jobs are being lost in the manufacturing sector, new jobs with similar profiles are appearing in service firms. These new jobs offset about two-thirds of those lost in manufacturing industries between 1975 and 2019. If laid-off workers can switch to a new job involving similar tasks, their loss of income is usually minimal— regardless of the sector in which they work. The key is maintaining occupation-specific skills. Therefore, rather than protecting individual industries, the focus should be on skills development, continued employability, and facilitating moves across sectors.

Keywords: Employment structure; structural change; displacements; layoffs; occupations; manufacturing decline; Germany (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 J21 J24 J31 J63 L23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_ ... 8.de/dwr-26-32-1.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:diw:diwdwr:dwr16-32-1

Access Statistics for this article

DIW Weekly Report is currently edited by Anna Bindler, Tomaso Duso, Sabine Fiedler, Marcel Fratzscher, Peter Haan, Claudia Kemfert, Alexander Kritikos, Alexander Kriwoluzky, Karsten Neuhoff and Sabine Zinn

More articles in DIW Weekly Report from DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Bibliothek ().