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News & Events
Prof. Einstein served graduate students as a model of prudence in remaining unfashionably true to the grand…
On the Outside: Prisoner Reentry and Reintegration
America’s high incarceration rates are a well-known facet of contemporary political conversations. Mentioned far less often is what happens to the nearly 700,000 former prisoners who rejoin society each year.On the Outside examines the lives of 22 people—varied in race and gender but united by their time in the criminal justice system—as they pass out of the prison gates and back into society. The book takes a clear-eyed look at the challenges faced by former prisoners as they try to find work, housing, and stable communities. Standing alongside the...
Departmental Colloquium Series
Xi Song, "Occupational Restructuring and Worker Mobility in the United States"
Monday, October 21st, 2024 at 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm followed by a Reception
Blumer Room - 402 Social Sciences Building & Via Zoom
Previous research on social mobility has primarily emphasized circulation mobility, leaving significant theoretical and empirical gaps in our understanding of structural mobility. We revisit the topic of structural mobility with three innovations. First, we define occupational restructuring using short-term and long-term occupational growth and decline. Second, we move beyond the limitations of traditional log-linear models by introducing a discrete choice model that integrates the effects of occupational growth and decline along with the constraints of job opportunities on worker mobility. Third, we leverage large-scale administrative data from the U.S. Occupational Outlook Handbook (2000-2020) to investigate how occupational restructuring affects workers’ mobility. Our results show that workers in both growing and declining occupations experience higher mobility than those in stable occupations. However, the direction of movement differs. Those in declining occupations tend to move laterally to other declining positions, often experiencing downward mobility. Conversely, workers in growing occupations have a wider range of mobility options, with many achieving upward mobility through higher-paying transitions. These results underscore how recent shifts in occupational structures exacerbate existing disadvantages for workers facing declining job opportunities.