EMCC European Monitoring Centre on Change

Employment transitions and occupational mobility in Europe: The impact of the Great Recession

The Great Recession had lasting effects on European labour markets, both in terms of employment levels and structure. Not only did employment rates drop significantly – taking years to return to pre-crisis levels, with some countries not fully recovered yet – but the crisis also accelerated structural change and generalised a pattern of job polarisation across Europe. But what happened to workers who lost their jobs during the recession, beyond the headline unemployment statistics? Did they remain unemployed or were they able to find other jobs? And what kind of jobs? Were the opportunities for upward occupational mobility affected by the crisis?

In a recently published Eurofound report, we investigate patterns of employment mobility and occupational flows associated with broad labour market developments during the crisis in countries with different economic and social structures. The main findings show that even countries with very different social systems can have a similar degree of occupational mobility in their economies. We evaluated the nature of these flows from an occupational perspective, taking into account the quality of the jobs from and into which labour is flowing, by differentiating them into wage quintiles.

The full report and the executive summary are now available.