Pause, Pivot, and Shift: Situational Human Capital and Responses to Sudden Job Loss

How, in the wake of the coronavirus crisis, do workers respond to rapid changes in the labor market? This paper mobilizes existing literature on occupational mobility and job loss to develop a theory of situational human capital in which some workers are better positioned to weather occupational transitions than others depending on the alignment between their skill sets, opportunities, and particular contexts. Previous literature looks at this in the case of “pausing,” when workers, such as women, take time off from work. Relatively less explored but equally consequential are transitions like “pivoting,” in which workers maneuver within their occupations to adjust their practices or platforms in order to keep working, and “shifting,” in which workers change their occupations altogether. Since most government unemployment benefits focus almost exclusively on workers’ pauses, they neglect to support workers as they pivot and shift during periods of labor market instability and disruption. This paper concludes by offering some policy recommendations to fill this gap.

Rethinking Occupational Mobility in Developing Countries

This chapter discusses current methods for measuring and analysing occupational mobility, and the way in which methods designed for the analysis of industrial countries may need to be modified when applied in other contexts. The chapter discusses particular features of some developing countries, such as their large and complex agricultural and informal sectors, and the problem of ‘equivalence of meaning’, which arises when stratification systems involve rather different institutional arrangements, for example with respect to land tenure. The chapter concludes with a discussion of absolute and relative mobility in Chile, China, Egypt, and India, bringing out both the similarities and the differences between these countries in their absolute and relative rates of mobility and intersectionality with gender.

Occupational and Educational Mobility Among Indian Muslims: Primary Survey-Based Evidence

Based on information obtained from 590 father–son pairs as part of the primary survey, this article discusses the issue of occupational and educational mobility among Indian Muslims. Intergenerational occupational and educational mobility and aggregate mobility measures have been analysed using mobility matrices. It uses a linear regression for education mobility and a multinomial logit model for occupational mobility to analyse the potential variables that are likely to influence sample households’ educational and occupational choices. The key finding is that educational mobility is much greater than occupational mobility and that half of the sons adhere to their fathers’ occupational categories. The results further show that the father’s occupation has a strong influence on the son’s educational achievement. It is recommended that the home, societal, peer pressure and the surroundings all be used to improve the educational outcome of the children. This study exhibits that Muslims’ perceptions of discrimination are substantially higher than their actual experiences, which stress the need for significantly improving communication between the government, NGOs, political parties and Muslim community leaders.

Dynamic Labor Reallocation with Heterogeneous Skills and Uninsured Idiosyncratic Risk

Occupational specificity of human capital motivates an important role of occupational reallocation for the economy's response to shocks and for the dynamics of inequality. We introduce occupational mobility, through a random choice model with dynamic value function optimization, into a multi-sector/multi-occupation Bewley-Aiyagari model with heterogeneous income risk, liquid and illiquid assets, price adjustment costs, and in which households differ by their occupation-specific skills. Labor income is a combination of endogenous occupational wages and idiosyncratic shock. Occupational reallocation and its impact on the economy depend on the transferability of workers' skills across occupations and occupational specialization of the production function. The model matches well the statistics on income and wealth inequality, and the patterns of occupational mobility. It provides a laboratory for studying the short- and long-run effects of occupational shocks, automation and task encroaching on income and wealth inequality. We apply the model to the pandemic recession by adding an SIR block with occupation-specific infection risk and a ZLB policy and study the impact of occupational and aggregate labor supply shocks. We find that occupational mobility may tame the effect of the shocks but amplifies earnings inequality, as compared to a model without mobility.

Occupational mobility of Brazilian immigrants in segmented labour markets

Canada needs immigration in order to maintain economic success, thus Canada accepts approximately 250,000 immigrants from countries around the world. Some of these immigrants find themselves gaining employment in the secondary labour market in the service and construction sectors. This paper aims to identify and analyze the experiences and issues Brazilian immigrants face in segmented labour markets. The study incorporates the knowledge and information gained from interviewing fifteen Brazilians who have recently immigrated to Canada and are employed in either the construction or service sector. After an in depth study, the following research will explore the issues revolving around occupational mobility, barriers to employment, educational credentials, and personal attitudes that Brazilian immigrants face in the labour market.