Career types and labor market structure: Intragenerational mobility in the United States

Abstract

This article contributes to research on intragenerational mobility and careers by conceptualizing and measuring three types of orderly careers defined by patterns of attachment to and mobility among organizations and occupations: those that are focused on a particular employer; those centered in a single occupation; and those that span occupations. The latter is the most complex and we identify orderly careers that traverse occupations in two ways: (1) as sequential movement in occupational internal labor markets (OILMs), which are structures that enable upward job and wage mobility that we measure using data from the CPS and O∗NET; and (2) as movement among occupational networks. We classify workers into career types from the bottom up, using their work histories in the NLSY. Our conceptualization of career types provides a link between labor market structures and intragenerational mobility by showing that orderly career types are associated with higher wages than disorderly careers and that OILM careers are related to greater wage growth.