Sociological Research on the Labor Market

Abstract

This article provides a critical analysis of recent sociological research on labor markets. Efforts by sociologists to provide structural explanations of earnings inequality that counter human capital theory have been hampered by methodological problems associated with inadequate model specification and the inappropriate use of variance as a criterion for theoretical importance. Moreover, the structural effects observed in recent studies do not have an unambiguous interpretation; they are consistent with three different mechanisms: differences in demand, internal labor market effects, and class effects. Future work in this area needs to pay greater attention to the links between theoretical interpretations and empirical analyses.