Careers in the Swedish labor market from the 1960s and onwards: From stability to instability?

A common picture of today´s labor market is that individuals´ careers have become more complex and less predictable in contrast to the labor market of the past characterized by permanent jobs and long-term employments. Often, the rate of change is assumed to be very rapid in recent years. To what extent is this correct?

Our research project aims to provide empirical evidence for a more nuanced debate by systematically investigating individuals’ transitions into the labor market and how career patterns develop from the 1960s to the present.

The overall research question is whether the Swedish labor market has gone from stability to instability in terms of both early and late careers and how this differ for women and men, those with and without immigration background, and in various local labor markets.

By doing systematic analyzes focusing on time from education to job, length of employment spells, and career patterns, we will be able to shed light on changes for birth cohorts born from at least the 1940s and onwards.

We will use register data and the occupational biographies in the Level of Life Surveys - the most recent ones being collected now in 2020.

Methodologically, we combine deductive longitudinal methods such as growth curve modelling with more inductive pattern-generating methods such as sequence analyzes.

Where the former methods give a clear picture of the average career development, the latter can identify whether, for example, there is a group in the labor market that alternates temporary jobs with unemployment periods and if this group grows over time.

In summary, our project, in comparison with previous research, is characterized by an ambition to study the instability of the labor market over a relatively long historical period to the present, to follow individuals in both early and late careers, and to combine different methods in order to draw empirically well-founded conclusions about trends in the instability in the Swedish labor market.