Employment status mobility in the life- cycle: an exploratory analysis

The main objective of this research is the analysis of the mobility among employment statuses or labour market states along the life cycle, using the work-life history data from the British Household Panel Survey. I adopt an exploratory approach analysing employment statuses as a whole embedded in the life cycle of individuals. The analysis focuses on the mobility of individuals among different employment statuses and different mobility measures are defined. The full sample is disaggregated by birth-cohort. Mobility patterns seem to be very different by cohort. Gender and involuntary job separations are important determinants of mobility among the employment statuses. In paritcular, the historical change in females participation in the labour market helps to explain why younger cohorts have more spells, are more mobile (although their greater mobility includes other than job-to-job movements), and have more homogenous histories than older cohorts (mainly because women have changed their old sequence of employment statuses including inactivity spells to a different pattern more similar to the mens pattern).