employed and unemployed job seekers

Non-technical summary Economic theory suggests that workers will change their job – and occupation – to improve wages over their career. However, a number of studies find substantial returns to experience accumulated within an occupation and argue that any loss of occupational experience associated with a change in occupation may result in lower wages, at least initially. This suggests that high levels of occupational mobility can severely inhibit a person’s career wage growth. Whether a change in occupation is a positive or negative event is likely to depend on the cause of the change. For example employed people searching for a new job will only accept job offers that are better than in their current job, either in terms of current wages, or in terms of future wage growth (or other working conditions). In contrast, people who are unemployed might be forced to accept sub-optimal jobs in order to exit unemployment and occupational change in this case might be to lower paying occupations, or occupations offering lower future wage growth. Our focus in this paper is to identify and compare the occupational mobility of employed and unemployed job seekers, a topic that has receive