Varieties occupational change in Europe after the great recession

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper empirically explores occupational change in Europe after the 2008-crisis (the Great Recession). During this period, which has remained relatively unexplored by the literature so far, many European economies have implemented profound institutional changes in their labour markets and transformed their growth models. Using individual-level data of 18 economies, I build three indicators of job quality -the average educational attainment, the median earnings and an index of job instability based on the contractual characteristics of the job- and analyse relative employment growth of jobs. The findings suggest that there is not just one pattern of occupational change in Europe, in opposition to the mainstream view of pervasive polarisation. On the contrary, I detect a variety of occupational change profiles, which even differ within the same country depending on the indicator employed.