Rising Intragenerational Occupational Mobility in the United States, 1969 to 2011

Despite the theoretical importance of intragenerational mobility and its connection to intergenerational mobility, no study since the 1970s has documented trends in intragenerational occupational mobility. The present article fills this intellectual gap by presenting evidence of an increasing trend in intragenerational mobility in the United States from 1969 to 2011. We decompose the trend using a nested occupational classification scheme that distinguishes between disaggregated micro-classes and progressively more aggregated meso-classes, macro-classes, and manual and nonmanual sectors. Log-linear analysis reveals that mobility increased across the occupational structure at nearly all levels of aggregation, especially after the early 1990s. Controlling for structural changes in occupational distributions modifies, but does not substantially alter, these findings. Trends are qualitatively similar for men and women. We connect increasing mobility to other macro-economic trends dating back to the 1970s, including changing labor force composition, technologies, employment relations, and industrial structures. We reassert the sociological significance of intragenerational mobility and discuss how increasing variability in occupational transitions within careers may counteract or mask trends in intergenerational mobility, across occupations and across more broadly construed social classes.

Concerns

As evidence relating the reality and basic features of the application service provider (ASP) market continues to grow, there begins to be less concern about confirming that any structural economic shift has continued historically, and more concern about understanding how the ASP industry is performing, and its impacts on productivity, investment, corporate capital formation, labor force composition, and competition. The relationship between the traditional outsourcing and the “latest wave” e-sourcing on the one hand, and Internet investment productivity on the other, is at the centre of the IT strategic problem confronting corporate management in the 21st century.

Foreign Worker Dependence in the Gulf, and the International Oil Companies: 1910-50

This article demonstrates that foreign worker dependence in the Gulf dates from the establishment of the oil industry in the early twentieth century. The composition of labor inflows were mainly determined by political and strategic, rather than commercial, concerns. Contrasting patterns of labor force composition evolved between those areas under British control, which imported labor from the Indian sub-continent, and the independent Saudi Arabia where labor was drawn from more diverse sources including the Italian settlers in Eritrea. Evidence of commercial-political tension over the employment of foreign workers, particularly Americans, is highlighted. Wages and conditions of employment are described.