The U-Shapes of Occupational Mobility
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Using administrative panel data on the entire Danish population we document a new set of facts characterizing occupational mobility. For most occupations, mobility is U-shaped and directional: not only low but also high wage earners within an occupation have a particularly large probability of leaving their occupation, and the low (high) earners tend to switch to new occupations with lower (higher) average wages. Exceptions to this pattern of two-sided selection are occupations with steeply rising (declining) productivity, where mainly the lower (higher) paid workers within this occupation tend to leave. The facts conflict with several existing theories that are used to account for endogeneity in occupational choice, but it is shown analytically that the patterns are explained consistently within a theory of vertical sorting under absolute advantage that includes learning about workers' abilities.
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Disagreements likely reflect measurement error in registers because firms do not update occupational switches of existing employees.
“The disagreements in Table A.5 likely reflect measurement error in the registers because firms generally do not update occupational switches of existing employees (Groes, Kircher and Manovskii, 2015).”
From Still Waters, Rapid Currents: Early Labor Market Transformation under Generative AI (2025) · cites this paper as Groes, Kircher and Manovskii, 2015
Appendix OA9 says miscoding is more likely when a worker switches firms, not because firms fail to update the occupations of employees who stay. Section 2.4.5 describes the occupational data as generally highly reliable, and the paper analyzes recorded occupational switches within firms. The source does not discuss the citing paper’s Table A.5. (LLM, conf=0.84)
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Research works printed but not linked: 27
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Still Waters, Rapid Currents: Early Labor Market Transformation under Generative AI
Humlum, A., & Vestergaard, E. (2025) · doi:10.3386/w33777 · Cited by 34 · see citing works
- Authors
- Groes, F., Kircher, P., & Manovskii, I.
- Affiliations
- Copenhagen Business School (DK)
- University of Edinburgh (GB)
- University of Pennsylvania (US)
- Corresponding author
- Groes, F.
- ORCID
- Groes, F.
- Venue
- The Review of Economic Studies
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2014-10-24
- Volume
- 82
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 659-692
- ISSN
- 0034-6527 (ISSN-L)
- 1467-937X
- OpenAlex
- W2076791750
- Cited by
- 134
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 10 · 2025: 14 · 2024: 12 · 2023: 20 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 7 · 2020: 9 · 2019: 10 · 2018: 6 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 7 · 2015: 9 · 2014: 5 · 2013: 4 · 2012: 4
- FWCI
- 19.99
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- Locations
- The Review of Economic Studies (publishedVersion)
- CBS Research Portal (Copenhagen Business School) (publishedVersion)
- Edinburgh Research Explorer (University of Edinburgh) (submittedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (0922406)
- FP7 Ideas: European Research Council (284119)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Labor market dynamics and wage inequality
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Intergenerational and Educational Inequality Studies
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Migration and Labor Dynamics
- Keywords
- occupational mobility, career choice, absolute advantage, labor productivity
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