Dynamics of Occupational Structure and Labor Market Transformation in Taiwan, 1978-2012
Date Issued
2015
Date
2015
Author(s)
Chang, Yi-Chun
Abstract
This research focuses on two time-related concepts: cohort difference and life course, examines how the dynamics of labor market transformation affect workers’ employment opportunities and career development, and reflects on the classic issue in sociology of the dynamics between individual actor and structure. One of the main contributions of this dissertation is that using the labor market cohort replaces with birth cohort referring to the timing people entering the labor market. People within the same labor markets cohort share and compete resources in the labor market and experience similar labor market structures; furthermore, the sharing experience will affect their employment outcomes beyond individual characteristics. Additionally, this research provides direct empirical evidence and systematically examines the sources and the consequences of the labor market transformation rather than indirect comparison among period differences or county differences. Using data from manpower survey between 1978 and 2012 as individual-level data, and indices of institutional factors and globalization information as macro-level data, I try to answer three questions: How and why does the job opportunity change over time? Whether do people from different cohorts experience different employment opportunities and develop different career trajectory? How does the labor market transformation explain the cohort differences in employment opportunities and career trajectory? The first analysis concerns the role of “job” in the labor market. Instead of individualized and mean-driven way to describe the labor market, I introduce job approach (Wright and Dwyer 2003) and relative distribution method (Handcock and Morris 1999) to plot the changes in job opportunity in the labor market over 35 years. And based on skill-biased technological change theory (Autor et al. 2003), I investigate the effect of industrial transformation on the changes in the distribution of job opportunity. The findings show that 1) the trends in the distribution of job opportunity reveals that higher-paying jobs increase in the beginning and then decrease, while lower-paying jobs decrease at first and then increase. Recently, both higher-paying and lower-paying jobs increase after 2006, that is, the distribution of job opportunity tends to be polarized. 2) Post-industrialization increases the extent of job polarization, and to be more precise, the division within the service sector is the main source of job polarization. High-skilled service sector provides especially more higher-paying jobs in the labor market. The following questions shift the focus from macro-level to micro-level, and concerns how the changing structures of the labor market influence individual’s employment outcomes. To begin with, I concentrate on the new entrants in the labor market and examine the cohort differences in return to education. Extending the queuing theory (Hodge 1973), I state that the wage distribution among workers with different level of education varies by educational expansion and further the distribution of job opportunity determines individual’s access to the jobs. In this study, I propose that the sharing experience of the labor market cohort will affect their employment outcomes beyond individual characteristics. Thus, I use hierarchical linear model (HLM) to explain how the cohort experience impact the cohort difference in return to education. Results display the decrease in the return to college by labor market cohort and the significant effects of the structures of the labor market on the cohort difference in return to education. The increased supply of educated workers leads to the lower wage for college graduates and the better wages for worker graduating from junior high school or under; in contrast, the increased demand of educated workers benefits high-skilled workers rather than low-skilled workers. Moreover, job polarization will bring educated workers higher wages, but exacerbate wages for the workers with low skills. Furthermore, from the perspective of life course, I would like to understand whether and how the effects of changing structures in the labor market last over the career. By using spline regression and HLM, I can examine the relationship among beginning wages, wage trajectories, and the plateau of wages to test cohort differences in wage trajectory depending on the hypotheses of firm-specific human capital and implicit contract (England 2014). The findings show that the older cohort tends to have a lower wage to begin with but experience a steeper trajectory to accumulate their wage and then achieve a higher plateau; whereas, the younger cohort has a higher beginning wage, but then their wages increase slowly and end up with a lower plateau. This cohort difference in wage trajectory is influenced by the lasting effect of labor market transformation. The higher supply of educated workers, the gentler slope of wage trajectory people will have. The higher demand of educated workers, the steeper slope of wage trajectory people will have. This study confirms that the labor market transformation intertwines with individual life course, and people are empowered and constrained under the structures. Therefore, we have to notice that the changing structures of the labor market influences workers’ employment outcomes in the long run. People will experience and develop different life trajectories under different cohort experience. The policy implications are discussed in the last section.
Subjects
labor market cohort
cohort difference
job opportunity
return to education
wage trajectory
Type
thesis
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