The occupation space: network structure, centrality and the potential of labor mobility in the French labor market

Abstract

This article presents the Occupation Space, a weighted and directed network of occupations built from an extensive database that tracks French workers employment trajectories between 2003 and 2015. In this network, the links between occupations stands for the easiness to switch from one occupation to another that we interpret as being a good proxy for skill proximity between occupations. The article first describes the structural characteristics of the network. We show that some occupations offer workers important redeployment possibilities to other occupations. Then we use information on the centrality of occupations in the network to analyze its correlation with wage premium and unemployment duration. Our results show that the network-based index of centrality is informative of the sources of several labor market outcomes and inequalities.