Three Models of Job Mobility in Labor Markets

Abstract

This study examines job mobility patterns in the United States through the analysis of job mobility rates. Utilizing event history analysis and retrospective job history data, a variety of job mobility rates are modeled. Besides the overall rate of job exiting, this study also examines rates of voluntary and involuntary exits, within- and between-employer moves, and upward job shifts. Informed by three theoretical models of job mobility—the reward-resource model, the limited opportunity model, and the vacancy competition model—hypotheses concerning the effects of education, occupational status, supervision, time in the labor force, gender, race, and economic sector on various job shift rates are formulated and tested. Among the major conclusions are (a) education increases job mobility, but does not uniquely determine the paths; (b) gender and racial differences pertain more to differences in mobility channels than to differences in the overall rate of job moving; and (c) dualistic accounts of labor market structures are problematic in that they tend to conflate several basic dimensions of job mobility patterns.