Job Mobility Research Articles

Employer changes and their effects on wages. Differences between genders and between different types of job mobility among German university graduates

ABSTRACT Changes in wages and other job characteristics during an individual’s career are often the result of job mobility. Using a sample of Bavarian university graduates, this work analyses the effects that employer changes have on men’s and women’s wages. For this, employer changes are grouped into three categories in order to account for different circumstances. Partly in contrast to previous research, the results show significant and positive effects of job mobility, irrespective of gender and of the type of employer change. However, financial returns are lower in case of changes for personal reasons and – at least when absolute instead of relative changes are analysed – for women. This can be explained largely by different circumstances which personal employer changes occur in and which women experience. The results are discussed with respect to the specifics of the German labour market structure and to gender segregation on the labour market.

An investigation of the relationship between scientists’ mobility to/from China and their research performance

Abstract A large number of overseas elites were brought back to China by the policy in the past decade. However, name disambiguation defied investigations on the relationship between their mobility and research performance. By taking advantage of the ORCID website and applying causal inference strategies, we investigated 2489 China-connected scientists’ academic performance in the Web of Science database in terms of their job mobility, including 1388 scientists who moved to China the treatment group, and 1101 scientists with a possibility to move to China the control group. The results show that first, scientists moving to China have a new growth pattern where both their productivity and the rates of being corresponding authors in publications grew more rapidly than before; however, they made fewer contributions to the four top journals, Nature, Science, Cell, and PNAS. Second, the research performance of the scientists is affected by the time of mobility towards China, the countries from which they moved, and the disciplines of their publications. Last, China now maintains symmetrical inflow-outflow patterns with most countries, especially developed countries in Europe and North America, with only a few exceptions (e.g., Pakistan).

Factors Associated with Employees’ Choice of Mandatory Retirement Plan: The Case of Malaysian Public Universities

This study examines the factors that influence public sector employees in making adecision to enroll in either one of the two types of mandatory retirement plans. A surveyof 348 Malaysian public universities employees was conducted, and the data obtainedwere analyzed using a logistic regression model. The results show that knowledge, planfeature, sources of retirement income, health status, job mobility, and extending workare the contributing factors of the choice of the retirement plan. Apart from extendingthe extant literature on retirement plan, this study provides further understanding ofthe employees’ retirement decision in a different scenario of retirement systems.

Authoritarian Leadership in Organizational Change and Employees' Active Reactions: Have-to and Willing-to Perspectives.

Although prior studies have found the negative relation of authoritarian leadership with workplace outcome, authoritarian leadership styles are particularly prevalent in emerging markets. This study examines the effectiveness of authoritarian leadership in organizational change by considering two boundary conditions: low perceived job mobility among employees in have-to exchange situations and high cognitive trust in leaders in willing-to exchange situations. Based on a sample of 203 employees and their supervisors in 39 work teams in China, multilevel modeling identified a negative impact of authoritarian leadership on employees’ active support for organizational change. However, this negative effect disappeared when perceived job mobility was low and cognitive trust in the leader was high. The findings offer insights into the prevalence of authoritarian leadership in emerging markets despite negative impressions of this leadership style (Harms et al., 2018).

Flexible Wages, Bargaining, and the Gender Gap

Does flexible pay increase the gender wage gap? To answer this question we analyze the wages of public-school teachers in Wisconsin, where a 2011 reform allowed school districts to set teachers' pay more flexibly and engage in individual negotiations. Using quasi-exogenous variation in the timing of the introduction of flexible pay driven by the expiration of pre-existing collective-bargaining agreements, we show that flexible pay increased the gender pay gap among teachers with the same credentials. This gap is larger for younger teachers and absent for teachers working under a female principal or superintendent. Survey evidence suggests that the gap is partly driven by women not engaging in negotiations over pay, especially when the counterpart is a man. This gap is not driven by gender differences in job mobility, ability, or a higher demand for male teachers. We conclude that environmental factors are an important determinant of the gender wage gap in contexts where workers are required to negotiate. Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

On the relationship between job performance and mobility:

On the relationship between job performance and mobility:

Alberta’s Opportunity: The Ins, Outs and Benefits of Greater Job Mobility

As Alberta comes out of the [Coronavirus Disease 2019] COVID-19 pandemic and economic lockdown, the province can promote economic revival and long-term economic growth by ensuring that it is the most welcoming jurisdiction for talented workers and entrepreneurs from across Canada. Reforms are needed to make it easier for workers to move into the province. Greater interprovincial mobility under a succession of regional and internal trade agreements has been beneficial and deepened the pool of workers available to Alberta. But obstacles remain for trades people and professionals who would come to Alberta. In particular, there are sometimes significant challenges to having their designation, training, or experience from other provinces seamlessly recognized. Recognizing those credentials, limiting the paperwork required of potential movers, and a more widespread recognition of national certifications and designations, such as those occurring under the Red Seal program, would enhance such mobility. The reforms proposed would facilitate mobility for employees and entrepreneurs alike. In short, when Canadians can move from one province to another with minimal barriers, the country as a whole benefits.

Left but Not Forgotten: Gender Differences in Networks and Performance Following Mobility

This paper investigates how shifts in an individual’s communication network when the individual experiences a job change affect performance and how those effects differ between men and women. Using a rich proprietary dataset including the personnel records, monthly performance, and email communications of thousands of employees, we examine job changes occurring within a large financial institution. Comparing objective performance prior to and following each job change, we show that mobility is disruptive to individual performance, but that women’s performance is less hampered than that of men. We argue and find evidence that this variation in performance can be explained by women’s and men’s differential likelihood of retaining ties to former colleagues at their previous jobs. While women tend to be embedded in dense networks that may limit their advancement in times of stability, these same network patterns may also foster the retention of relationships to colleagues when women employees move to new jobs. Such “network resilience” offers multiple benefits that bolster their post-move performance. Our results contribute to research on mobility, social network dynamics, and gender by showing that network characteristics that are conventionally considered disadvantageous in the cross-section may help mitigate performance challenges when individuals experience job mobility.

Heterogeneous Passthrough from TFP to Wages

What is the impact of firms' productivity shocks on workers' labor earnings? To answer this question, we propose a novel approach to identify firms' productivity shocks that combines a nonparametric production function estimation method with a set of two-way fixed effect regressions to control for differences in labor quality across firms. We apply this method on matched employer-employee data that encompasses the entire population of workers and firms in Denmark between 1995 and 2010. Our dataset allows us to separately study workers that stay in the firm across consecutive periods from those that transition between firms, to control for workers' endogenous job mobility decisions, and to investigate how the passthrough from firms' shocks to wages varies across narrow population groups. We find an elasticity of workers' hourly wages to firms' productivity of 0.08. This implies that a positive shock to firms' productivity of one standard deviation generates an increase of $1,100 US dollars in annual wages for the average worker in Denmark. This result also implies labor supply elasticities of around 5.6. We also find that both persistent and transitory shocks to firms are passed on to wages and that there is marked asymmetry in passthrough between positive and negative productivity shocks. In fact, after controlling for workers' endogenous mobility decisions, the elasticity of hourly wages to a negative productivity shock is twice that of a positive productivity shock of the same magnitude. This suggests that workers are more exposed to negative than to positive shocks to firms' productivity. Furthermore, we find that the changes in wages due to variation in firm productivity are quite persistent and do not dissipate even five years after the shock. By looking at the heterogeneity of passthrough across firm and worker groups, we provide insights about the theoretical mechanisms that could explain the patterns of passthrough we observe in the data.

Belastungen und Gefährdungen bei berufsbedingter Mobilität: eine Tagebuchstudie

Stresses and risks in job-related mobility: a diary study Goal: A quarter of full-time workers in Germany are mobile for their work (mobile jobs, weekend commuters and long-distance commuters), which is attributable among other things to the increasing need for a customer- and service-centred approach and to the demand for mobile care for the elderly. In 2012, 139 people died in road traffic whilst going about their business. The consequences of traffic accidents are considerably more serious than those of other occupational accidents and require more time off work. At the same time, they represent a particular challenge for prevention since they mostly happen outside company premises. Methods: The diary study was one of several data collection methods used within the scope of the DGUV-funded project “BestMobil: Work-related mobility – Identification and Testing of Prevention Approaches”. The diary was completed in the morning/before the shift and in the evening/after the shift. It contained questions about the expectations of the day, well-being (before/after), working and driving hours, break duration, psychological and physical stress, conflicts, supporting factors and the short-term consequences of psychological strain. Results: The analysis of the diary entries (pre-test) of n=36 participants from nine companies allows an insight into the daily routine of mobile workers. It provides information on very long working hours with rather short breaks, the most common conflicts, factors that make the day easier for mobile workers and the most frequent psychological and physical complaints. Conclusion: The results of the study show that good time management, which includes good preparation, scheduled breaks and times buffers, has high prevention potential. Keywords: psychological strain – job mobility – car accidents – stress – diary

Mobility and Research Performance of Academics in City-Based Higher Education Systems

This study assesses how four types of mobility, which are analysed simultaneously, are associated with the current research output quality and visibility of academics working in the city-based higher education systems of Hong Kong and Macau. Transnational educational mobility is associated with the academics’ educational path, whilst intrasectoral job mobility, intersectoral job mobility and transnational job mobility are related to their professional careers. The research output, quality and visibility of academics are based on three indicators pertaining to the publications of these academics in international, peer-reviewed and indexed journals: the number of publications, the cumulative SCImago journal rank of these publications (which measures quality from an output perspective) and the citations obtained by these publications (which measures visibility). The results show that different mobilities have different effects on research output, quality and visibility, and that often these effects can be beneficial to one indicator but concurrently detrimental to another. Nested analyses of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and non-STEM academics, and by sex, offer further insight into the associations of these mobilities with knowledge output and outcomes.

Occupational Mobility in Europe: Extent, Determinants and Consequences

We examine occupational mobility and its link to wage mobility across a large number of EU countries using worker-level micro data. In doing so, we document the extent, the individual-level determinants and the consequences of occupational mobility in terms of wage outcomes and structural change across the EU. In addition, we identify potential explanations for the observed cross-country variation. Our results show that on average, 3% of European workers change their occupation per year, and that the extent of occupational mobility differs strongly by country. Individual characteristics play an important role for person-specific occupational mobility, but have little explanatory power for differences between countries. Occupational mobility is strongly associated with earnings mobility, and occupation movers are more likely than job movers to experience a downward rather than an upward earnings transition; by contrast, changing occupation voluntarily is more often followed by an upward wage transition. As opposed to composition effects, employment protection legislation seems to play an important role for explaining cross-country differences in occupational mobility through its impact on overall job mobility.

Should I stay or should I go? A study of IT professionals during a national crisis

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to discuss two important behaviors related to job mobility in the IT profession, namely, changing jobs to move to another organization (turnover) and changing the profession entirely (turnaway), during a national crisis. Based on the theoretical foundation of the push–pull–mooring perspective, a research model is developed that includes professional self-efficacy (PSE), job insecurity (JI) and job satisfaction (JS) as important antecedents.Design/methodology/approachUsing a positivist approach and a survey method, the authors analyzed data from IT professionals from different economic segments in Brazil. Data collection occurred in two distinctive moments of the largest crisis in modern Brazilian history – a pre-awareness moment (first half of year 2015) and a crisis-conscious moment (first half of year 2016).FindingsThe findings reveal that PSE negatively influences JI and positively influences JS, JI positively influences turnaway intention, and JS negatively influences both turnover intention and turnaway intention. The effect of the national crisis was observed in that it further accentuated the intention of IT professionals to leave the profession. Another effect was related to age, as older professionals are less willing to turn over but more willing to turn away.Research limitations/implicationsBesides developing a parsimonious model to study both the intention to leave the organization and the intention to leave the profession, the study sheds light on how IT professionals react to economic crises and how the reaction varies by age.Practical implicationsThe study puts to question the common belief that IT professionals are secure in the job market due to high demand for their skills and investments made by organizations to keep them on the job. Employers must pay attention to JI and turnover/turnaway intentions.Originality/valueThis study is among the few to study JI and aspects of the theory of human migration in IT. It is also possibly the first to discuss the effects of a national crisis on the mobility patterns of IT professionals.

OCCUPATIONAL MOBILITY AND CHRONIC ILLNESS IN LATE LIFE: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW

Objectives: Occupational mobility at various stages in the life course may have a cumulative influence on health outcomes in later life. This study aims to (1) systematically review the association between occupational mobility and chronic illness in late life; and (2) identify potential mechanisms underlying this relationship. Methods: A systematic review of literature was carried out by searching two databases (PubMed and SocIndex) and reference lists. Eligible studies examined associations between occupational mobility and at least one measure of chronic illness among adults aged 50 years or above. Occupational disruptions (e.g., job loss) were reviewed as special cases of occupational mobility. Results: Downward occupational mobility and mid-life occupational disruptions have been consistently shown to predict higher risk of chronic illness in older adults. Several potential mechanisms were identified from the literature: (1) health behaviors, including dietary practices and alcohol consumption; (2) psychosocial factors, including stress, stigma, job control, job demands, and job satisfaction; (3) economic factors, including financial incentives or constraints; and (4) other individual characteristics, including personality traits and coping skills. There is also evidence that the timing of job mobility and the duration of (each) occupation modify the association between occupational mobility and health in late life. Discussion: These findings suggest that experiencing involuntary occupational mobility at various stages in the life course can increase the risk of chronic illness in late life. Health professionals and policymakers should target more resources to disadvantaged older adults who experience involuntary occupational transition.

Labour market transitions after layoffs: the role of occupational skills

Abstract We study the role of occupational skills for labour market transitions after layoffs. Drawing on Lazear’s skill-weights approach, we develop empirical measures for occupational specificity and the skill distance between occupations to investigate how skills map into job mobility and wages. Our analysis reveals several important insights. First, higher occupational specificity is associated with lower job mobility and a longer period of unemployment. However, it is also associated with higher wages. Workers receive a wage premium of about 9% for re-employment in a one standard deviation more specific occupation. These results suggest a risk–return trade-off to educational investments into more specific skills. Second, the skill distance is negatively associated with wages. Workers moving between occupations with similar skill requirements suffer smaller wage losses than those with more distant moves. Thus, skills appear to be transferable across occupations and to play a pivotal role in the determination of wages.

Managing career lengthening in France: why such inertia?

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to understand to what extent the analysis of career scripts explains the inertia in implementing mandatory interviews designed to anticipate career lengthening in France. Design/methodology/approach This exploratory approach is based on 26 interviews of French cadres (a mix of managers and professionals) aged 45 and over in the media agency sector. Findings Two career scripts – one for the majority who perceive themselves in a dead end, and the other, more optimistic for those who experience job mobility – show several commonalities. Moreover, their combination suggests an entanglement with the previous business model of media agencies. Research limitations/implications The survey was conducted on a non-random sample in a radically changing sector. However, the entanglement may explain the inertia with regard to changes in career scripts and agencies’ business model. Practical implications As these cadres need to work longer and move from traditional media expertise to cross-functional consulting capacity, mandatory interviews should be integrated into a human resources management strategy that fosters intra-organizational dynamics. Social implications The lengthening of the professional life in France appears as a paradigm shift. The study of career sustainability in contexts becomes a critical research field for management development. Originality/value The institutional approach of managers’ careers is well developed, but there is a gap in understanding the entanglement of career scripts and business models. This may help address inertia in change processes.

Non-Competes, Human Capital Policy & Regional Competition

In the past few years, human capital law has become one of the most dynamic policy fields in the country. Multiple states have reformed their noncompete policies, passing new legislation that limits their use. New bills that would similarly limit the enforcement of noncompetes are currently before Congress. Both the use of noncompetes and litigation over their enforcement, are on the rise nationwide, and several state attorney generals have taken up the issue by launching investigations into employers who require their workforce to sign unenforceable noncompetes. An equally dazzling wealth of studies, analysis, intellectual debates, and exchanges have emerged on the research side. In particular, the past few years brought a significant number of empirical, experimental, and theoretical studies offering more evidence and explanations about the key role that human capital policy, including noncompete contracts, plays in industries and regions. This article, written for a symposium honoring the scholarship of Professor Ronald Gilson, I present the state of the scholarly field on human capital and economic competition and develop three arguments about the future of noncompete research. First, in Part I, I unpack the multiple dynamic effects that job mobility and noncompetes have on regions. Beyond knowledge spillovers, it is important to recognize a range of distinct, though interrelated effects. These include at least ten important aspects that are supported by job mobility: behavioral, dynamic, firm-level, and regional-level effects. In particular, a neglected aspect in the literature of noncompetes is the disproportionate harmful effect noncompete clauses may have on women. Recent economic research on labor market monopsonies and the relationship between mobility and wage growth allows us to see connections between innovation policy and distributive justice. Second, I argue that while the study of noncompetes has been invaluable to understanding talent flows, mobility restrictions are far broader than merely formal covenants not to compete. Covenants that restrict employee mobility appear in many shapes and forms. I introduce the range of contractual restrictions that employers require in standard agreements and I argue that these restrictions too, should be understood and researched through the lens of labor market competition and mobility. Third, I argue that the prevalence of practices that subvert policy requirements, such as including unenforceable restrictions in employment contracts underscores how we as scholars need to encompass market practices in the empirical research, as well as recognize comparative advantages of proactive solutions including antitrust and regulatory tools over contract doctrine.

The Great Recession and Labor Market Adjustment: Evidence from Latvia

How severe are costs to workers when the economy undergoes a large recession? In this paper, we try to provide an answer to this question using as an example Latvia, a new EU member state, which faced the most severe recession in Europe and globally in 2008. We employ individual-level Latvian Labor Force Survey and EU SILC data over the years 2002–2016 and 2007–2015, respectively, and analyze transitions in the labor market and their determinants as well as occupational mobility. Our results show that adjustment takes place predominantly at the extensive margin since it is driven by flows to unemployment. We also show that by 2016 the labor market has bounced back to its pre-crisis performance and that for the average worker Latvia’s macroeconomic policies that focused on internal devaluation did not impose large costs in the medium run. However, the young, ethnic minorities and the less skilled were particularly affected by the crisis. Wage regressions suggest that job mobility is not associated with an increase in wages, i.e., with increased labor productivity.

An International Comparison of Skills, Traits and Job Mobility

Making use of an international survey that directly assesses the cognitive skills of the adult population, I document systematic differences in the effect of skills on job mobility across the 37 countries in the sample. While economic growth is associated with relatively higher job mobility among skilled workers, the prevalence of information and communication technology (ICT) in the workplace is associated with relatively lower job mobility. The documented patterns are in line with Schumpeterian growth models of creative destruction in which skilled workers transition to jobs with advanced technologies more easily.

The integration of young workers into the labour market in France

PurposeUsing a representative survey of young persons having left full-time education in France in 1998 and interviewed in 2001 and 2005, the purpose of this paper is to examine the process of their integration into normal employment (a stable job with a standard employment contract) and the extent to which job matches are inefficient in the sense that the pay in a job is below an individual’s potential earnings. The latter are determined principally by diploma level and educational specialisation, although other forms of training and labour market experience are relevant.Design/methodology/approachA stochastic earnings frontier approach is used in order to examine workers’ ability to capture their full potential earnings in labour markets where there is inefficient job matching (due to the lack of information, discrimination, over-education or the process of integration).FindingsThe results suggest that young workers manage to obtain on average about 82 per cent of their potential earnings three years after leaving full-time education and earnings inefficiency had disappeared four years later. The results are robust to the treatment of selectivity arising from the exclusion of the unemployed in the estimation of the frontier.Originality/valueThe stochastic earnings frontier is a useful and appropriate tool for modelling the process of labour market integration of certain groups (young persons, migrants and the long-term unemployed) where over-education due to inefficient initial job matches occurs. Over time this situation tends to be rectified as job mobility leads to improved matching and less inefficiency.