Finding a better job: The geography of socio-professional mobility during working life

IF 2.9 2区经济学 Q1 ECONOMICS

Regional Science and Urban Economics Pub Date : 2025-10-22 DOI:10.1016/j.regsciurbeco.2025.104162

Paul Charruau , Anne Epaulard

{"title":"Finding a better job: The geography of socio-professional mobility during working life","authors":"Paul Charruau , Anne Epaulard","doi":"10.1016/j.regsciurbeco.2025.104162","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>What determines the chances of moving up or down to better or worse jobs? We examine how local labor markets influence individuals’ socio-professional mobility throughout their working lives, focusing on large promotions and demotions. Using an empirical strategy that accounts for spatial sorting bias, applied to a sample of approximately 350,000 workers in France between 2009 and 2015, we find that job density, local human capital, and labor market size significantly increase the likelihood of being promoted to a higher socio-professional status. The effect of local factors is stronger for external promotions (outside the firm) than for internal ones. Moreover, experience accumulated in the most densely populated and educated areas continues to enhance promotion prospects, even after relocating to less dense or educated areas. This dynamic effect of promotion explains around 16% of the wage premium associated with experience in dense areas. Finally, we show that agglomerations effects on promotion are driven more by human capital externalities and proximity to other dense markets than by pure urbanization or scale effects.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48196,"journal":{"name":"Regional Science and Urban Economics","volume":"115 ","pages":"Article 104162"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9000,"publicationDate":"2025-10-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Regional Science and Urban Economics","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166046225000791","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Abstract

What determines the chances of moving up or down to better or worse jobs? We examine how local labor markets influence individuals’ socio-professional mobility throughout their working lives, focusing on large promotions and demotions. Using an empirical strategy that accounts for spatial sorting bias, applied to a sample of approximately 350,000 workers in France between 2009 and 2015, we find that job density, local human capital, and labor market size significantly increase the likelihood of being promoted to a higher socio-professional status. The effect of local factors is stronger for external promotions (outside the firm) than for internal ones. Moreover, experience accumulated in the most densely populated and educated areas continues to enhance promotion prospects, even after relocating to less dense or educated areas. This dynamic effect of promotion explains around 16% of the wage premium associated with experience in dense areas. Finally, we show that agglomerations effects on promotion are driven more by human capital externalities and proximity to other dense markets than by pure urbanization or scale effects.

查看原文本刊更多论文

找一份更好的工作：职业生涯中社会职业流动的地理

是什么决定了你晋升或降级到更好或更差的工作的机会？我们研究了当地劳动力市场如何影响个人在整个工作生涯中的社会职业流动性，重点是大规模的晋升和降职。利用考虑空间分类偏差的实证策略，我们对2009年至2015年间法国约35万名工人的样本进行了研究，发现工作密度、当地人力资本和劳动力市场规模显著增加了晋升到更高社会职业地位的可能性。本地因素对外部晋升（公司外部）的影响比对内部晋升的影响更大。此外，在人口最密集和受教育程度最高的地区积累的经验继续提高晋升的前景，即使在迁移到人口较少或受教育程度较低的地区之后也是如此。这种晋升的动态效应解释了大约16%的工资溢价与人口密集地区的经验有关。最后，我们发现集聚效应对晋升的影响更多地是由人力资本外部性和与其他密集市场的接近性驱动的，而不是纯粹的城市化或规模效应。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

Regional Science and Urban Economics Multiple-

CiteScore

5.30

自引率

9.70%

发文量

期刊介绍： Regional Science and Urban Economics facilitates and encourages high-quality scholarship on important issues in regional and urban economics. It publishes significant contributions that are theoretical or empirical, positive or normative. It solicits original papers with a spatial dimension that can be of interest to economists. Empirical papers studying causal mechanisms are expected to propose a convincing identification strategy.