Career progression: Getting‐on, getting‐by and going nowhere (original) (raw)

Careers, Labor Market Structure, and Socioeconomic Achievement

American Journal of Sociology, 1977

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Parallel Lives: Birth, Childhood and Adolescent Influences on Career Paths

2004

This paper uses sequence methods and cluster analysis to create a typology of career paths for a cohort of British 29 year olds born in 1970. There are clear career 'types' identified by these techniques, including several paths dominated by various forms of non-employment. These types are strongly correlated with individual characteristics and parental background factors observed at birth, age ten and age sixteen. By estimating a multinomial logit model of career types we show how policy makers might identify early on those young people likely to experience long-term non-employment as adults, enabling better targeted preventative policy intervention.

Overeducation, undereducation, and the theory of career mobility

Applied Economics, 2004

The theory of career mobility (Sicherman and Galor 1990) claims that wage penalties for overeducated workers are compensated by better promotion prospects. Sicherman (1991) was able to confirm this theory in an empirical study. However, the controls for the opposing phenomenon of undereducation used in his tests produced unconvincing results, for which no sound theoretical explanations were given. The only re-test yet conducted (Robst 1995) also produced ambiguous results. In the present paper, we estimate random effects models to analyze relative wage growth using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel. We find that overeducated workers have markedly lower relative wage growth rates than correctly allocated workers, while undereducated workers enjoy higher rates of relative wage growth. Our results cast serious doubt on the career mobility model, at least with respect to the overeducation issue. In view of the acknowledged positive correlation between access to training and upward career mobility, the plausibility of our results is supported by the finding that overeducated workers have less access to formal and informal on-the-job training, while undereducated workers are more likely to be admitted to such programs.

Job access at labour market entry and occupational achievement in the life course

International Journal of Population Geography, 2003

This paper addresses the question of the extent to which job access at labour market entry influences socio-economic status later in life. Multivariate models of workers' socio-economic status at the ages of 30, 40, and 50 were estimated using longitudinal data. The results show that job access at labour market entry is indeed instrumental in career advancement over the life course. The importance of job access at labour market entry increases significantly with age. Good job access at the beginning of the labour career evidently gives workers an advantage over others who start in less favourable labour markets.

Measuring career mobility: An empirical comparison of six mobility indexes

1999

The current paper presents six indexes that can be used to characterize the course of a career during a particular time interval, respectively, (1) the total number of transitions during that interval; (2) the number of positive transitions; (3) the number of negative transitions; (4) the subtraction of the number of negative transitions from the number of positive transitions; (5) the relative uncommonness of the transitions; and (6) the subtraction of the number of negative transitions from the number of positive transitions, weighted by their uncommonness. Advantages and disadvantages of these six indexes are discussed. Further, an empirical example is presented that draws on data from a sample of 357 employed Dutch youth. Finally, our approach is compared to previous approaches (event-centered methods, such as survival analysis, and career-centered methods, such as clustering techniques). It is concluded that our simple approach complements these other approaches well.

Occupational Careers and Longitudinal Data: Tools and Perspectives of Research

Quality & Quantity, 2000

Over the last years, the start of an increasing number of longitudinal researches and the development of suitable techniques of analysis have made possible the study of an increasing number of questions about social mobility and individual careers. Yet there is not just one way to face the study of careers. For the richness of the information they contain, longitudinal data offer the possibility to carry out different types of analysis according to the different questions of research. In this article four different approaches to the study of work-life careers will be introduced. The objective is twofold. On one hand, the study intends to offer a brief introduction to the most recent and sophisticated techniques that can be used for the analysis of careers. On the other hand, the article aims to point out the theoretical contribution that each technique can give to the debate on social mobility. The main potentialities and limits of the techniques will be stressed too. The techniques introduced in this article represent a fruitful approach for the study of work-life histories and occupational careers. Nevertheless they can be used for the analysis of all kinds of social careers.