Occupational Mobility of Routine Workers

Terhi Maczulskij

No 327, Working Papers from Työn ja talouden tutkimus LABORE, The Labour Institute for Economic Research LABORE

Abstract: This paper analyzes occupational polarization within and across workers, as well as the occupational mobility of routine workers, using comprehensive data from Finland. As in most industrialized countries, job markets have polarized over the last few decades. Decomposition analysis shows that the upper tail of occupational polarization is largely a with-workers phenomenon, indicating that workers have moved to abstracts tasks. In contrast, the share of low-level service tasks increases largely through entry dynamics. The direction of occupational mobility is nevertheless linked with the task content in origin jobs. Conditional on observed general and specific human capital, routine cognitive workers are more likely to move up in the hierarchy, while routine manual workers are more likely to move to low-skilled service occupations. Data on plant closures and mass lay-offs are also used to identify involuntary separations from routine occupations. These results demonstrate similar strong uneven adjustment pattern, with routine cognitive workers being more able to adjust with smaller employment disruptions and wage costs.

Keywords: Job market polarization; routine manual; routine cognitive; occupational mobility; displacement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J23 J62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 49 pages
Date: 2019-04-15
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hrm and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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https://labore.fi/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Tyopapereita-327.pdf First version, 2019 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Occupational Mobility of Routine Workers (2024)
Working Paper: Occupational Mobility of Routine Workers (2021)
Working Paper: Occupational Mobility of Routine Workers (2021)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pst:wpaper:327

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