Rising Intragenerational Occupational Mobility in the United States, 1969 to 2011

Despite the theoretical importance of intragenerational mobility and its connection to intergenerational mobility, no study since the 1970s has documented trends in intragenerational occupational mobility. The present article fills this intellectual gap by presenting evidence of an increasing trend...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:American sociological review 2017-06, Vol.82 (3), p.568-599
Main Authors: Jarvis, Benjamin F., Song, Xi
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Career transitions
Careers
Classification
Economic models
Employment
Intergenerational mobility
intragenerational mobility
Labor force
Labor force participation
Linear analysis
Loglinear analysis
mobility
occupation
Occupational Mobility
Occupational structure
Occupations
Social classes
Social mobility
social stratification
Trends
Variability
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Summary:Despite the theoretical importance of intragenerational mobility and its connection to intergenerational mobility, no study since the 1970s has documented trends in intragenerational occupational mobility. The present article fills this intellectual gap by presenting evidence of an increasing trend in intragenerational mobility in the United States from 1969 to 2011. We decompose the trend using a nested occupational classification scheme that distinguishes between disaggregated micro-classes and progressively more aggregated meso-classes, macro-classes, and manual and nonmanual sectors. Log-linear analysis reveals that mobility increased across the occupational structure at nearly all levels of aggregation, especially after the early 1990s. Controlling for structural changes in occupational distributions modifies, but does not substantially alter, these findings. Trends are qualitatively similar for men and women. We connect increasing mobility to other macro-economic trends dating back to the 1970s, including changing labor force composition, technologies, employment relations, and industrial structures. We reassert the sociological significance of intragenerational mobility and discuss how increasing variability in occupational transitions within careers may counteract or mask trends in intergenerational mobility, across occupations and across more broadly construed social classes.
ISSN:0003-1224
1939-8271
1939-8271
DOI:10.1177/0003122417706391