Women Move Differently: Job Separations and Gender

Abstract

Women Move Differently: Job Separations and GenderUsing a large German linked employer-employee data set and methods of competing risks analysis, this paper investigates gender differences in job separation rates to employment and nonemployment. In line with descriptive evidence, we find lower job-to-job and higher job-to-nonemployment transition probabilities for women than men when controlling for individual and workplace characteristics and unobserved plant heterogeneity. These differences vanish once we allow these characteristics to affect separations differently by gender. When additionally controlling for wages, we find that both separation rates are considerably lower and also significantly less wage-elastic for women than for men. JEL Classification:J62, J63, J16

From Lifetime Jobs to Churning?

“…At the same time, these individuals have acquired a substantial amount of specific human capital, which makes employers reluctant to dismiss them. A similar structure of age group coefficients can also be found in Hirsch and Schnabel (2010) and Bergemann and Mertens (2011).…”

“…On the econometric side, the paper closest to ours is Bergemann and Mertens (2011), as they estimate duration models that control for left-truncation and distinguish between destination states and job termination reasons. The other existing papers using duration models either (i) do not account for lefttruncation (Booth, Francesconi, and Garcia-Serrano, 1999;Gottschalk and Moffitt, 1999), (ii) do not study the evolution of job stability but compare different socio-economic groups (Marinescu, 2009;Hirsch and Schnabel,…”

“…3 As mentioned by Farber (2007), it seems that high-quality manufacturing jobs are lost, perhaps to import competition, and are being replaced by low-quality service sector jobs (so-called hamburger-flipping jobs). Manufacturing relies more heavily on specific human capital which requires a longer subsequent period of time to recoup the cost of (new job, unemployment or inactivity) and the events that caused the latter (quits or layoffs), along the lines of Booth, Francesconi, and Garcia-Serrano (1999), Gottschalk and Moffitt (1999), Hirsch and Schnabel (2010), and Bergemann and Mertens (2011). To some extent, transitions from employment to unemployment and the propensity of layoffs may well reflect job insecurity.…”

Works council introductions in Germany: Do they reflect workers’ voice?

“…For instance, Boockmann and Steffes (2010) document that employment of older workers is more stable and that workers with a higher qualification level are more likely to change employers, but less likely to go into non-employment. Hirsch and Schnabel (2012) further document that women are less likely to change employer than men, but more likely to go into non-employment.…”

Gender Effect in Explaining Mobility Patterns in the Labor Market: A Case Study of Turkey

“…However, when different transitions are taken into account, the results indicate that women are more likely to make a JNE transition and less inclined to get a new job. Hirsch and Schnabel () reach a similar conclusion by using large German employer‐employee data, and find lower JJ and higher JNE transition probabilities for women after controlling for both individual and workplace characteristics, such as the presence of collective agreement or works council. They also find that there are obvious gender differences regarding the impact of workplace conditions.…”