Occupational Mobility in the Year 2000: Projections for American Men and Women

We construct intergenerational occupational mobility tablesfor men and women aged 25-64 in the year 2000. The procedure for creating such tables involves three steps: (1) deriving origin distributions in the absence of actual survey data on occupational background; (2) constructing destination distributions using occupational forecasts prepared by the Bureau of Labor Statistics; (3) calculating cell counts by adjusting the most recent mobility tables available to the derived origin and destination distributions using the Deming-Stephan technique. The empirical accuracy of some aspects of our projection method is also assessed. We calculate several descriptive statistics on the basis of our predicted mobility matrix and examine mobility trends by comparing these statistics to those based on tables from earlier periods. Our results show an increasing tendency toward immobility and downward mobility, especially for men. Postwar American society has been characterized by extensive upward social mobility. The driving force behind this mobility has been change in the occupational structure: "despite the many social changes in the United States in the last two decades, it is a more favorable occupational structure, and only that, which has sustained or improved the mobility opportunities of American men" (Hauser et al. 1975b:597). Some prognosticators thought that this extensive upgrading of the occupational structure would continue indefinitely (Porter 1968). However, it is a phenomenon of the past unlikely to recur in the near future. Recently, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) of the Department of Labor published projec* The authors contributed equally to this article. We thank the anonymous reviewers from Social Forces, as well as Henryk Domanski, John Lukasiewicz, Bogdan Mach, Zbigniew Sawihski, and Kazimierz Slomczyhski for comments on earlier drafts of this article. Financial supportfrom the Department of Sociology at the University of Vermont is gratefully acknowledged. An earlier version of this article was presented at a meeting of the Research Committee on Social Stratification of the International SociologicalAssociation, held in August of 1989 at Stanford University. Direct all correspondence to Daniel H. Krymkowski, Department of Sociology, University of Vernont, 31 S. Prospect St., Burlington, VT 05405 (BrINET: D_Krymkowski@Uvmvax). i) The University of North Carolina Press Social Forces, September 1992, 71(1):145-157 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.30 on Fri, 27 May 2016 05:50:27 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 146 / Social Forces 71:1, September 1992 tions of the occupational structure for the year 2000 (Silvestri & Lukasiewicz 1987). The BLS forecasts a considerably slower rate of occupational growth during 1986-2000 han was the case between 1972-86. Silvestri and Lukasiewicz (1987) point out that the "19 percent increase [projected to occur between 1986 and 2000] is only half the average annual rate of increase that occurred over the previous 14-year period" (46). Moreover, the slowdown applies most significantly to higher-status occupational groups. For example, the executive, administrative, and managerial category increased by 73.7% between 1972 and 1986, but is projected to increase by only 28.7% between 1986 and 2000 (Silvestri & Lukasiewicz 1987). The slowdown in the lower-status category of service workers, however, will be much less extensive: service workers increased by 45.9% between 1972-86 and are predicted to increase by 32.7% between 1986-2000. Given the connection between changes in the occupational structure and social mobility, it is important to examine the implications of the BLS labor-force projections for mobility. Will the projected changes in the occupational structure significantly alter the mobility chances of Americans? In this article, we predict the social mobility pattern for the year 2000 and assess recent mobility trends. We next describe the approach used to assess the effect of slower occupational growth on mobility. Deriving an Origin Distribution In a very influential paper, Duncan (1966) discusses the problem of constructing the origin distribution of an intergenerational occupational mobility table in the absence of actual survey data on social background. Among other things, he demonstrates that the origin distribution of such a table does not refer to an occupational distribution at a particular point in time. Although the problem is not as straightforward as some had thought, it is nonetheless solvable. In this section we show how the origin distribution of any national-level intergenerational occupational mobility table1 can be derived using standard demographic concepts, some of which Duncan explicitly mentioned. These concepts include the age distribution of the labor force in the destination year, and age-specific and occupation-specific statistics on fertility, child mortality, and career mobility. The construction of the origin distribution is presented by considering three time points: t, t+T, and T, where t is ffie birth year of persons in the labor force in year T, t+T iS the year of reference for occupational origins (in that year persons born in year t are T years old), and T is the year for which the destination distribution is constructed. T and T are constants, t is a variable, and t+T ? T. We consider the age j of persons in the labor force in year T to be in the range V.i, jiJ, and the following relations between the birth years and ages of the oldest and youngest persons apply. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.30 on Fri, 27 May 2016 05:50:27 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Occupational Mobility in the Year 2000 / 147