Youth Labor Trajectories and Social Changes: Transitions and Occupational Mobility in Three Generations of Mexican Workers

The aim of this paper is to analyze, from a life course perspective, changes in certain transitions related to occupational mobility during labor trajectories of young men and women of three generations, in Mexico.

Data come from EDER 2012, a national longitudinal survey.

The analysis is based on the study of:

1. The first entry to the labor market and the number and duration of occupational transitions between 20 and 30 years old.

2. Mobility tables at the same ages between five specific occupational transitions:

a. Between "formal" and "informal" jobs.

b. Between salaried and non-salaried position at work.

c. Between manual and non-manual occupations.

d. Between full time and part time jobs.

e. Between jobs in industrial and service sector.

3. Discrete time regression models associated with these same transitions.

Through the analysis of mobility tables for each of these transitions and the study of the weights associated to their constraints, the objective is to test a hypothesis of social change related with the precariousness, outsourcing and de-salarization processes of work force at early ages in this country, coupled with increased "heterogeneous" labor trajectories in younger cohorts (where the "determinants" factors are more diffuse).

Under this hypothesis, we admit that the processes of globalization and internationalization of the economy enable greater heterogeneity in certain occupational transitions and an increase in the diversity of youth work trajectories.