Occupational mobility in Norway

Abstract

This thesis investigates how yearly occupational mobility has developed in Norway between the years 1972 and 2015. It also analyses the characteristics of workers that experienced the most occupational switches, and control for demographic changes in the workforce of the population. To investigate this topic, this thesis uses quarterly panel data from the Norwegian Labor Force Survey, where several cleaning procedures have been conducted through the computer program STATA with additional calculations through the computer program Microsoft Excel. The majority of the methodology is replicated from Lalé’s (2012) research on occupational mobility in France, with following comparison of estimated results throughout the thesis. Yearly occupational mobility in Norway averages to 4.1 % for the whole period, which is higher than occupational mobility in France, but similar to previous findings from the U.S., U.K., and Germany. However, this average differs between male and female workers from various age-groups with different educational backgrounds. Mobility has also been reduced since 1972, and would have been much higher if the age and educational composition of the workforce remained unchanged over the years. Despite downward trends in yearly mobility, some sub-groups of the workforce experienced both higher reductions and increased mobility over the years. For example, female occupational mobility has converged towards male occupational mobility, reflecting increasing similarities with respect to labor market behaviour over the years of survey. Although several cleaning procedures have been conducted to discard coding misclassifications in the dataset, the results are still highly volatile, proving that the results may suffer from measurement error.

This thesis investigates how yearly occupational mobility has developed in Norway between the years 1972 and 2015. It also analyses the characteristics of workers that experienced the most occupational switches, and control for demographic changes in the workforce of the population. To investigate this topic, this thesis uses quarterly panel data from the Norwegian Labor Force Survey, where several cleaning procedures have been conducted through the computer program STATA with additional calculations through the computer program Microsoft Excel. The majority of the methodology is replicated from Lalé’s (2012) research on occupational mobility in France, with following comparison of estimated results throughout the thesis. Yearly occupational mobility in Norway averages to 4.1 % for the whole period, which is higher than occupational mobility in France, but similar to previous findings from the U.S., U.K., and Germany. However, this average differs between male and female workers from various age-groups with different educational backgrounds. Mobility has also been reduced since 1972, and would have been much higher if the age and educational composition of the workforce remained unchanged over the years. Despite downward trends in yearly mobility, some sub-groups of the workforce experienced both higher reductions and increased mobility over the years. For example, female occupational mobility has converged towards male occupational mobility, reflecting increasing similarities with respect to labor market behaviour over the years of survey. Although several cleaning procedures have been conducted to discard coding misclassifications in the dataset, the results are still highly volatile, proving that the results may suffer from measurement error.