Geographic Labor Mobility Research Articles

Industry Variations in Geographic Labor Mobility Patterns

Through the use of data derived from a one percent sample of Social Security Administration records, patterns of interregional mobility in the period 1957 to 1960 are explored for male workers by industry of major job in 1957. The data are available for ten broad industrial categories and they are used to explore the extent to which workers in different industries are responsive to the factors of distance and earnings levels when they move between the nine broad census regions. The basic conclusions are: (1) that workers respond positively to earnings and negatively to distance and (2) that the strength of the distance variable is indicative of its measuring more than just the pure costs of interregional movement. It is suggested that the latter may reflect the presence of barriers to the flow of labor market information between regions.

The Turnover of Labour in Industry, an Actuarial Study

To judge from the available literature, labour turnover seems to be a subject of considerable interest to social scientists. To begin with it has been studied on the descriptive level as a social phenomenon in order to clarify what motivates people to work with a firm and what factors are of importance for their decisions to quit one job and apply for another (5, 6, 8, 12, 14). Secondly, this process of job-changing is part of the larger research-area of social as well as geographical mobility of labour. The emphasis is here on full employment and the structure and change of the labour force. Thirdly, figures on the average labour turnover in various groups of industries have in several countries been collected monthly on the initiative of economists. These figures are used by the economists to predict national business trends (3, 10). Further, labour turnover has long been employed by social scientists in studies of industrial organization. It frequently serves as criterion for the output of the organization (i.e. behaviour of the foremen, attitudes of workers, productivity) (9). Psychologists too, occasionally view labour turnover as a criterion for the validation of selection tests. Finally, a special interest in labour turnover has been shown by economists and actuarians in connection with the development and control of pension plans, mostly for industrial companies (15). The results of the research on labour turnover have been summarized by several authors (2, 13). The most important results on which there seems to be some agreement are:

The Geographical Mobility of Labour

The Geographical Mobility of Labour

The Geographical Mobility of Labour: A Study of Migrations

The Geographical Mobility of Labour: A Study of Migrations