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Purpose-I suggest that we conceptualize labor markets as observable social networks, in which workplaces are the nodes and people moving between workplaces are the edges. The movement of people delivers the actionable information as to what the supply, demand, and going wage for labor might be. Labor market networks are hypothesized to be quite thi...
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Context 1
... that promote the diffusion of new information through networks and create the small world phenomena referenced above. In a network formed by the movement of people between workplaces we might expect most movement to be among workplaces utilizing similar skill sets among their employees, with occasional weak tie links between dissimilar employers. Fig. 2 shows what such a labor market might look like. In Fig. 2 all workplaces in the same industry exchange employees, creating four clusters of firms that have fairly complete information on each other, but for most firms their information on the supply and price of labor in other industries is indirect. This network has some interesting ...
Context 2
... and create the small world phenomena referenced above. In a network formed by the movement of people between workplaces we might expect most movement to be among workplaces utilizing similar skill sets among their employees, with occasional weak tie links between dissimilar employers. Fig. 2 shows what such a labor market might look like. In Fig. 2 all workplaces in the same industry exchange employees, creating four clusters of firms that have fairly complete information on each other, but for most firms their information on the supply and price of labor in other industries is indirect. This network has some interesting properties. This kind of network is ideal for diffusing ...
Context 3
... four workplaces in the center of Fig. 2 are particularly interesting in that they provide linkages between the industry clusters. Network theorists talk about them as acting as brokers (Gould & Fernandez, 1989) or sitting in a structural hole between social worlds (Burt, 1992). Such positions are potentially powerful in that they have access to information not directly ...
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... these types of broker roles to respond more quickly to shifts in the supply and demand for labor than other workplaces in the same general field. Gould and Fernandez point out that there are five different types of broker roles that may have different implications for power dependencies depending upon the substantive context. The broker nodes in Fig. 2 are ''gatekeepers'' in their terminology governing the flow of external information into a ...
Citations
... Employer-based studies typically examine the entire pool of job applicants to a firm, but do not consider how the pool of applicants is selected from the entire pool of workers looking for a job. Without such information, it remains unclear to what extent the pool of job applicants is self-selected by a firm's propensity to hire through networks (Tomaskovic-Devey, 2013). When, for instance, workers believe that networks improve their chances of getting hired, more motivated workers might try to enter the job application pool through networks while less motivated job seekers use the application method most convenient to them (Flap and Boxman, 2001;Tomaskovic-Devey, 2013). ...
... Without such information, it remains unclear to what extent the pool of job applicants is self-selected by a firm's propensity to hire through networks (Tomaskovic-Devey, 2013). When, for instance, workers believe that networks improve their chances of getting hired, more motivated workers might try to enter the job application pool through networks while less motivated job seekers use the application method most convenient to them (Flap and Boxman, 2001;Tomaskovic-Devey, 2013). To address such selection bias concerns, this study uses data on the entire pool of mobile workers looking for a job in the labor market within one industry at a given point in time to compare for the same employer at the same point in time how networks shape the likelihood that the employer in question hires a worker from the entire pool of mobile workers available in the market. ...
... Just as in other labor markets, I assume that relations in the playerplayer and player-coach network form when players and coaches are employed by the same team at the same time and span across organizations when players and coaches move around to other clubs in the labor market (cf. Collet and Hedström, 2013;Tomaskovic-Devey, 2013). During the qualitative interviews, players recognized that employment at the same team is a good indicator for the existence of network relations. ...
Despite a vast literature examining networks in labor markets, it remains unclear how employers differ in their use of networks during recruitment. This study examines network hiring among high and low reputation organizations in Dutch professional football. Within-employer within-transfer window fixed effects conditional logistic regression models demonstrate that networks increase the likelihood that low reputation employers hire workers, but no network effect was found among high reputation employers. Qualitative interviews with employees suggest that low reputation employers identify their search pool and gather hard-to-observe information about potential hires through networks, while high reputation employers do not rely on networks for their search pool and gather information through observing workers for prolonged periods of time
Does working in a low-wage job lead to increased opportunities for upward mobility, or is it a dead-end that traps workers? In this article, we examine whether low-wage jobs are “stepping-stones” that enable workers to move to higher-paid jobs that are linked by institutional mobility ladders and skill transferability. To identify occupational linkages, we create two measures of occupational similarity using data on occupational mobility from matched samples of the Current Population Survey (CPS) and data on multiple dimensions of job skills from the O*NET. We test whether work experience in low-wage occupations increases mobility between linked occupations that results in upward wage mobility. Our analysis uses longitudinal data on low-wage workers from the 1979 National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY) and the 1996 to 2008 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). We test the stepping-stone perspective using multinomial conditional logit (MCL) models, which allow us to analyze the joint effects of work experience and occupational linkages on achieving upward wage mobility. We find evidence for stepping-stone mobility in certain areas of the low-wage occupational structure. In these occupations, low-wage workers can acquire skills through work experience that facilitate upward mobility through occupational changes to skill and institutionally linked occupations.
We conceptualize within-organization job mobility as a position-taking process, arguing that the structure and outcome of claims over positions are characteristics of organizational inequality regimes. Drawing on data from 10 distribution centers from a large U.S. firm, we examine gendered job mobility as the observed network of workers moving among jobs. Results from network analysis and meta-regression reveal that in the firm examined, workers tend to move between jobs with similar gender compositions, that mobility lattices tend to be more ladder-like for male-concentrated jobs but more circuitous for female-concentrated jobs, and that there is less upward mobility overall in organizations with higher levels of wage inequality. Both organization level inequalities and the relationship between positions within organizations condition mobility. While we do not observe discursive claims on positions, we argue that these are the underlying mechanisms driving gendered job mobility.
