job-to-job changes, the comparable figure for women is 6*7 per cent.'^
^^ Stewart and Greenhalgh (1984) found that 17.8 per cent of women aged 24 or younger had experienced interruptions to their work career.Our data which is collected 10 years after theirs, shows 13.2 per cent of women left employment between 1985 and 1986.
The questions in the 1986 wave of the survey from which this information is obtained are:(i) Do you currently work in a job, business or farm? If yes, then: (ii) At your last interview you said
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There are thirteen hsted reasons for job changing, the ten presented in the following table plus the three categories of sacked, retrenched, laid off and "other". The categories excluded from the Table 3.2 are involuntary job changers, while those categories included are labelled voluntary job changers. Whilst most of the included categories are clearly voluntary, there are some, such as "mind a family member", which are less clear cut and require some judgement as to whether they should be included. However those individuals that fall into a description that may be ambiguous comprise only a small part of the sample.
you were working for do you still have that job? If no, then:(iii) What was the main reason you left that job? (iv) If not working in the current year, why did you leave the job
Table 3.2
Reason for voluntary job change (1985-1986) Reason for
changing jobs.
Males Females Total
Holiday job 0 1 1 Temporary/Seasonal job 34 36 70 Dissatisfied with job 153 140 293 Sick/Disabled 5 7 12 Pregnant 0 7 7 Mind a family member 1 1 2 Move 30 32 62 Travel 15 9 24 Study 22 14 36 Move to a better job 156 148 304 TOTAL 416 395 811
The most important factors motivating voluntar\' job changes between 1985 and 1986 for both males and females are dissatisfaction with the 1985 job, and the "move to a better job" (Table 3.2). These two categories account for 74.3 and 72.9 per cent of all voluntarv' job changes for males and females respectively.
Being employed in a temporar\' job accounts for 8.2 and 9.1 per cent of job changes amongst males and females respectively. Moving location or study are also significant determinants of job change, 12.5 per cent of males and 11.6 per
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cent of females change jobs for one of the two above reasons.
The ALS data provide a rich source of information regarding the personal and job characteristics of job changers which may be used to explain mobility. The
following tables and cross tabulations are provided as descriptive tools to gain some understanding of the general characteristics of the data.
Many studies fmd that those with higher education change jobs less. Miller (1984). In our data this association is not clear cut. More schooling is associated with less voluntary job changing, but job changing does not seem to be related to post-school qualifications.
We choose two variables to measure the individuals educational attainment. The first is completed schooling which is a continuous variable pertaining to the number of years of primary and secondary education completed by the individual.''*
Table 3.3
Voluntary job changing by schooling Years
School
Total Job Change Yes Job Change No 6 or less to 8 44 14 (31.8%) 30 (68.2%) 9 - 10 1019 263 (25.8%) 756 (74.2%) 11 - 12 or more 1367 331 (24.2%) 1036 (75.8%)
The proportion of respondents in each completed schooling category who voluntarily changed jobs between 1985 and 1986 decreases from 31.8 per cent for those with between six or less and eight years of schooling, to 25.8 and
The years of schooling variable is continuous and ranges from 6 or less years of schooling through to 12 or more years of schooling.
24.2 per cent for those with between nine and ten or eleven and twelve or more years, respectively (Table 3.3).
The second education variable is categorical, and takes the value of one if the respondent has completed a trade certificate, diploma or degree since finishing school and zero for all other categories. The number of job changers with qualifications is presented in Table 3.4.
Table 3.4
Voluntary job changing by post-school qualiflcation Qualification Total Job Change
Yes
Job Change No
With 902 231 (25.6%) 671 (74.4%)
Without 1528 377 (24.7%) 1151 (75.3%)
The data indicate that voluntary job changing is marginally higher amongst those respondents with post-school qualifications but the difference is minuscule. The way in which education is measured and the nature of the education seem to matter.
Another important variable associated with voluntary job change is years of work experience (Table 3.5). This variable is measured as the respondents age minus years of school minus 5.'^
^^ We recognise that there are problems with this variable particularly for women, although the inaccuracy will be somewhat diminished because the average age of the sample is young. The divergence in years of experience, as measured by the Mincer proxy which we have adopted and "true" experience, increases with age as women leave the workforce for family responsibilities.
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Table 3.5
Voluntary job changing by years of experience Years
Experience
Total Job Change Yes Job Change No 0 - 1 year 365 50 (28.6%) 125 (71.4%) 1 - 2 years 180 81 (24.5%) 250 (75.5%) 2 - 4 years 640 163 (25.4%) 478 (74.6%) 4 - 6 years 545 188 (25.5%) 550 (74.5%)
In these data job changing remains reasonably constant over the range of experience, except perhaps for between zero and one years of experience where the probability of changing jobs is higher. It is often argued that job changing diminishes with experience (Mincer and Jovanovic 1981). It is surprising that in these data the relationship between experience and job changes does not decline more smoothly.
The length of experience in a particular job, which we refer to as job tenure, may also be associated with voluntary job changing. The longer someone works in a particular job the more expertise and job specific knowledge they acquire in that job and the greater the costs of leaving it. The data of Table 3.6 seem to support a negative relationship.
Table 3.6
Voluntary job changing by years of tenure Years Tenure Total Job Change
Yes Job Change No 0 - 2 1472 439 (29.8%) 1033 (70.2%) 2 - 4 467 92 (19.7%) 375 (80.3%) 4 - 6 314 52 (16.6%) 262 (83.4%) 6 - 10 177 25 (14.1%) 152 (85.9%)