Transcript Occupational mobility, career progression and the hourglass

Occupational Mobility, Career
Progression and the Hourglass Labour
Market
Craig Holmes and Ken Mayhew
Government Equalities Office and ESRC seminar on Social Mobility and
Equality: early years, educations and transition to the labour market,
October 18th 2012
www.skope.ox.ac.uk
The hourglass labour market
• Routinisation hypothesis (Autor, Levy and Murnane, 2003):
– Computer capital replaces tasks, not skills
– Labour employed in routine tasks can be swapped for technology
– Occupations performing non-routine tasks grow
• Polarisation hypothesis (Goos and Manning, 2007)
– Routine occupations found in middle of income distribution
– Non-routine occupations found at top and bottom of distribution
Professional
Managerial
Intermediate
Routine
Manual
Service
1981
8.7%
11.1%
9.5%
51.3%
5.8%
13.7%
1996
12.4%
15.6%
13.4%
37.9%
4.8%
15.8%
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2004
14.4%
14.8%
13.7%
30.8%
5.8%
20.5%
The hourglass labour market
• Less obvious in earnings than in occupational titles (Holmes
and Mayhew, 2012)
• Change in occupational structure affects progression paths
and mobility patterns
– Focus is on the ‘room at the top’.
– Little said about ‘room at the bottom’
• Three issues:
– Who moves from routine jobs?
– What does this change mean for low-wage workers?
– Do earnings mobility and occupational mobility go together?
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Where do routine workers go?
• Cohort studies: how much mobility is displacement?
Probability of staying in routine
A-Levels and equivalent
Graduates
Decline of routine jobs:
0%
10%
DISP
0%
10%
DISP
NCDS (1958 cohort)
95%
85%
10%***
88%
67%
20%***
BCS (1970 cohort)
82%
78%
3%***
62%
57%
5%***
• Is this mobility upward, downward, or outwards?
10% decline in routine jobs
NCDS
BCS
Non-graduate
Graduate
Non-graduate
Graduate
Professional
2.6%
18.4%
0.7%
-17.2%
Probability of moving to...
Managerial Intermediate Service
5.6%
2.3%
0.4%
11.7%
5.1%
0.2%
1.3%
2.0%
0.3%
-1.6%
-1.9%
0.4%
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Unemployed
0.6%
-0.4%
-1.6%
-1.9%
Inactive
1.1%
1.0%
0.2%
0.8%
“Room at the top”?
• Paths to the top may not depend purely on qualifications
– Hard to explain difference between BCS and NCDS mobility
– Type of job matters – internal labour markets create more stable
pathways and protect against “shocks”
– BCS cohort may position themselves better within routine jobs –
implies barriers to mobility for older NCDS cohort workers
• Little strong evidence of changes in progression paths of
service workers
– Some transitions linked to career paths e.g. in healthcare or retail
1992-4
2001-3
2008-10
Managerial
0.9%
1.1%
0.7%
Professional Intermediate
0.2%
0.8%
0.4%
1.3%
0.5%
0.9%
Routine
2.5%
3.3%
2.2%
Manual
0.1%
0.1%
0.1%
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Service
86.6%
88.0%
87.4%
Unemployed
2.7%
1.3%
3.0%
Inactive
6.2%
4.5%
5.2%
Occupational mobility and earnings
• Occupational transitions are not always associated with the
expected higher earnings
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Occupational mobility and earnings
Change in graduate premium, 19872001
• Returns to holding a degree vary significantly over the
distribution – supply exceeding demand in places?
4.0%
3.5%
3.0%
2.5%
2.0%
1.5%
1.0%
0.5%
0.0%
-0.5% 0.00
-1.0%
0.20
0.40
0.60
0.80
Percentile of earnings distribution
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1.00
Conclusion
• Occupational structure has been a key driver of mobility in the
past
• Structural changes affect career paths, which shape
progression opportunities
• Education, qualification and human capital data can not
adequately explain all of these trends – need to remember
non human capital barriers to mobility
• Evidence that the “room at the top” benefits the whole labour
market is limited
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Contact Details
Craig Holmes
ESRC Centre on Skills, Knowledge and Organisational
Performance (SKOPE),
Department of Education,
Norham Gardens,
Oxford
Email: [email protected]
www.skope.ox.ac.uk