Occupational Mobility, Career
Progression and the Hourglass Labour
Market
Craig Holmes and Ken Mayhew
Government Equalities Office and ESRC seminar on Social Mobility and
Equality: early years, educations and transition to the labour market,
October 18th 2012
www.skope.ox.ac.uk
The hourglass labour market
• Routinisation hypothesis (Autor, Levy and Murnane, 2003):
– Computer capital replaces tasks, not skills
– Labour employed in routine tasks can be swapped for technology
– Occupations performing non-routine tasks grow
• Polarisation hypothesis (Goos and Manning, 2007)
– Routine occupations found in middle of income distribution
– Non-routine occupations found at top and bottom of distribution
Professional
Managerial
Intermediate
Routine
Manual
Service
1981
8.7%
11.1%
9.5%
51.3%
5.8%
13.7%
1996
12.4%
15.6%
13.4%
37.9%
4.8%
15.8%
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2004
14.4%
14.8%
13.7%
30.8%
5.8%
20.5%
The hourglass labour market
• Less obvious in earnings than in occupational titles (Holmes
and Mayhew, 2012)
• Change in occupational structure affects progression paths
and mobility patterns
– Focus is on the ‘room at the top’.
– Little said about ‘room at the bottom’
• Three issues:
– Who moves from routine jobs?
– What does this change mean for low-wage workers?
– Do earnings mobility and occupational mobility go together?
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Where do routine workers go?
• Cohort studies: how much mobility is displacement?
Probability of staying in routine
A-Levels and equivalent
Graduates
Decline of routine jobs:
0%
10%
DISP
0%
10%
DISP
NCDS (1958 cohort)
95%
85%
10%***
88%
67%
20%***
BCS (1970 cohort)
82%
78%
3%***
62%
57%
5%***
• Is this mobility upward, downward, or outwards?
10% decline in routine jobs
NCDS
BCS
Non-graduate
Graduate
Non-graduate
Graduate
Professional
2.6%
18.4%
0.7%
-17.2%
Probability of moving to...
Managerial Intermediate Service
5.6%
2.3%
0.4%
11.7%
5.1%
0.2%
1.3%
2.0%
0.3%
-1.6%
-1.9%
0.4%
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Unemployed
0.6%
-0.4%
-1.6%
-1.9%
Inactive
1.1%
1.0%
0.2%
0.8%
“Room at the top”?
• Paths to the top may not depend purely on qualifications
– Hard to explain difference between BCS and NCDS mobility
– Type of job matters – internal labour markets create more stable
pathways and protect against “shocks”
– BCS cohort may position themselves better within routine jobs –
implies barriers to mobility for older NCDS cohort workers
• Little strong evidence of changes in progression paths of
service workers
– Some transitions linked to career paths e.g. in healthcare or retail
1992-4
2001-3
2008-10
Managerial
0.9%
1.1%
0.7%
Professional Intermediate
0.2%
0.8%
0.4%
1.3%
0.5%
0.9%
Routine
2.5%
3.3%
2.2%
Manual
0.1%
0.1%
0.1%
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Service
86.6%
88.0%
87.4%
Unemployed
2.7%
1.3%
3.0%
Inactive
6.2%
4.5%
5.2%
Occupational mobility and earnings
• Occupational transitions are not always associated with the
expected higher earnings
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Occupational mobility and earnings
Change in graduate premium, 19872001
• Returns to holding a degree vary significantly over the
distribution – supply exceeding demand in places?
4.0%
3.5%
3.0%
2.5%
2.0%
1.5%
1.0%
0.5%
0.0%
-0.5% 0.00
-1.0%
0.20
0.40
0.60
0.80
Percentile of earnings distribution
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1.00
Conclusion
• Occupational structure has been a key driver of mobility in the
past
• Structural changes affect career paths, which shape
progression opportunities
• Education, qualification and human capital data can not
adequately explain all of these trends – need to remember
non human capital barriers to mobility
• Evidence that the “room at the top” benefits the whole labour
market is limited
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Contact Details
Craig Holmes
ESRC Centre on Skills, Knowledge and Organisational
Performance (SKOPE),
Department of Education,
Norham Gardens,
Oxford
Email: craig.holmes@education.ox.ac.uk
www.skope.ox.ac.uk