Constrained choice? Graduate early career job-to-job mobility in core and non-core regions in the Netherlands

Abstract

The chapter investigates job-switch strategies of graduates from Dutch HEIs residing in core and non-core areas: to what extent are residential and workplace mobility coupled with switches across industrial sectors? Registry data from Statistics Netherlands enables us to track graduation cohorts from seven years before to eighteen years after graduation. Overall, the likelihood of labour-market dynamics varies strongly with the life-phase in which we find graduates. The chapter finds that, like migration, job mobility is not a random event. It occurs, in some cases, repeatedly, to specific groups who appear to operate at the edges of the job-opportunity space. The chapter finds that sector and workplace mobility appear contemporarily positively inter-related, persistent, but also inter-temporally competing. Residential mobility appears somewhat disconnected from labour-market dynamics, although it appears that some wait for a match to come to fruition before changing residences. Mobility is higher across the board for graduates residing in non-core areas, with non-core singles found to be relatively mobile. The chapter demonstrates that it is not the presence of a partner as such that limits spatial mobility, but whether or not he or she is economically active. Controlling for this, and contrary to what is often reported in migration literature, the chapter finds that couples without children, living in non-core areas, are more likely to exhibit residential mobility than singles. They are also more likely to engage in sectoral and workplace mobility. Non-core couples with children are also found to be more likely to engage in residential mobility than singles.