Destabilization and Destandardization: For Whom? The Development of West German Job Mobility since 1984

We use the Socio-Economic Panel to study how the job-shift patterns of West German workers changed between 1984 and 2008, analyzing trends separately by gender, education, labor force experience, firm size, and sector. We document a considerable reduction in the rate of within-firm job changes, especially for men in large companies and with limited labor force experience, which we interpret as evidence of a decline of internal labor markets and increasing difficulties at labor market entry. A second major result of our analysis is that rates of between-firm mobility and employment exit have risen primarily for low-educated men and women.