Intragenerational Job Mobility in a Period of Rapidly Rising Inequality: The Case of Mid- Career Men in the Czech Republic in the 1990s

PWP-CCPR-2005-036

Abstract

Former socialist countries experienced dramatic changes in the organization and structure of their economies and labor markets in the 1990s. While the impact of those changes on the distribution of income and earnings has been thoroughly studied already, less is known about their consequences for patterns of occupational and labor market mobility. In this text we examine how the incorporation of the Czech Republic into the global economy and changes in employment and labor market policies impacted the frequency and patterns of job-to-job, job- to-unemployment, and unemployment-to-job mobility of Czech mid-career men between 1989 and 1998. Using single and competing risks survival models we show the growing dispersion of labor market risks – most notably the risk of unemployment- across social strata after 1995, when the period of relative social stability ended. Contrary to expectations, however, those changes were quite modest and we assume that other economic actors- e.g. younger and older male employees and women of all ages - might have been exposed to higher levels of risk resulting from the restructuring of the economy.