Job Mobility in Europe, Japan and the United States

Abstract

Evidence about job mobility outside the United States is scarce and difficult to compare cross-nationally because of non-uniform data. We document job mobility patterns of college graduates in their first three years in the labour market, using unique uniform data covering 11 European countries and Japan. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we replicate the information in this survey to compare the results with the United States. We find that (a) US graduates hold more jobs than European graduates, (b) contrasting conventional wisdom, job mobility in Japan is only somewhat lower than the European average, and (c) there are large differences in job mobility within Europe. © Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2011.