Occupational Mobility in the American Labor Force.

Abstract

Occupational mobility is an important but relatively unexplored facet of labor market behavior and of the supply and demand structure of occupations. Because the transfer of workers among occupations is a source of both job openings and new entrants to specific occupations, information on mobility is critical to estimating future needs for new workers and to adequate planning of occupational training. Labor market analysts regard mobility as a mechanism for the adjustment of the labor supply to changing conditions of demand, an important consideration in developing policies to avoid or alleviate manpower shortages or surpluses. To individual workers, occupational mobility may be a means to advance toward a career goal or simply a way to choose a better job from among many occupations. Because of its complexity, occupational mobility has been one of the more difficult types of labor force behavior to quantify.1 Its measurement requires a longitudinal data source identifying labor force status and occupation of individuals at two points in time. Also, a large sample is needed to provide reliable information by age and sex for relatively detailed occupation categories. Until recently, studies of mobility have been of limited usefulness because the data sources covered only small geo-