Yale University [email protected] www.yale.edu/ciqle Working(Paper(2009‐08( Which Type of Job Mobility Makes People Happy? A Comparative Analysis of European Welfare Regimes Anette Eva Fasang Sara Geerdes Klaus Schoemann Yale University New Haven, October 2009Biographical information Anette Eva Fasang (corresponding author) is a Postdoctoral Associate affiliated with the Center for Research on Inequalities and the Life Course at Yale University. Her research interests include life course processes, stratification, labor markets, and longitudinal data analysis. She has published on gender inequality in recruitment processes, job mobility, and methods in life course research. Sara Geerdes is a Postdoctoral Associate at Jacobs University Bremen working on the relationship of job mobility and developmental outcomes. She recently defended her dissertation about school-to-work transitions of second generation migrants in Germany and the Netherlands. Klaus Schömann is Associate Professor of Sociology at the Jacobs Center on Lifelong Learning and Institutional Development, Jacobs University Bremen. His research interests include life course and labor market sociology, and processes of life long learning. His publications cover education and further training, labor markets, and labor market policies. *Corresponding author: Anette E. Fasang, Center for Research on Inequalities and the Life Course, Yale University, 140 Prospect St, New Haven CT 06520, [email protected]. We would like to thank Liuben Siarov for excellent research assistance and valuable comments. Tom Vandenbrande, Didier Fouarge, Laura Coppin, Peter Robert, Hubert Krieger, Enrique Fernandez, Peter Ester and Peter van der Hallen provided helpful comments on previous drafts of the manuscript.Fasang et al. Which Type of Job Mobility Makes People Happy? 1 Abstract In view of changing job mobility patterns in Europe, the impact of job mobility on job satisfaction is gaining importance, yet has received little attention. In this paper we address two questions: (1) how different types of job mobility affect job satisfaction, and (2) whether welfare state regimes alter the relationship between job mobility and job satisfaction. Theoretically we integrate economic and sociological approaches to job satisfaction with insights from the psychology of well-being. We find that internal mobility is more powerful in predicting job satisfaction than external mobility; and downward moves have a larger impact than upward moves. The experience of unemployment lowers satisfaction, even after re-employment. These effects remain stable across job satisfaction domains and welfare regimes. However, we also welfare regime differences suggesting that individuals evaluate their own job satisfaction with reference to pan-European, rather than nationally bound reference frames. Keywords: job satisfaction, job mobility, unemployment, welfare regimesFasang et al. Which Type of Job Mobility Makes People Happy? 2 I. INTRODUCTION In view of changing labor market careers (Spilerman 2009) and an increasing emphasis on the ‘soft’ outcomes of labor market processes, the impact of job mobility on job satisfaction is gaining importance, yet has received little attention. Subjective or ‘soft’ outcomes of labor market processes have recently drawn increasing attention across disciplines, e.g. in economics (Frey & Stutzer 2002, Layard 2005), the psychology of well-being (Diener & Oishi 2005), and social inequality research (Delhey & Kohler 2006). Job satisfaction is a subjective outcome of experienced labor market mobility. The present study contributes to the literature by addressing two questions: (1) are there ‘net job mobility effects’ on job satisfaction beyond changing job rewards? and (2) how do they vary across welfare state regimes? We extend previous research by integrating economic and sociological theories on job mobility and job satisfaction with insights from the psychology of well-being. We use an abbreviated retrospective life course questionnaire (Brückner & Mayer 1998, Mayer & Brückner 1989, Reimer 2004) on job mobility as part of the Eurobarometer (64.1)i to allow a retrospective reconstruction of important markers of job mobility. Our approach overcomes shortcomings of purely cross sectional analyses by ensuring temporal precedence of job mobility events before the reporting of job satisfaction through the retrospective collection of punctuated job mobility information (Blossfeld & Pötter 2001). European welfare states differ in levels of job mobility (DiPrete et al. 1997), policies that restrict or facilitate mobility (Schmid et al. 1996), general job satisfaction levels (Sousa-Poza & Sousa-Poza 2000), and enduringly negative effects of unemployment (Gallie & Paugam 2000). This suggests that job mobility may affectFasang et al. Which Type of Job Mobility Makes People Happy? 3 subsequent job satisfaction differently across welfare regimes. While welfare state differences in terms of employees’ job preferences (Gallie 2007) and work orientations (Hult & Svallfors 2002) have recently drawn increasing attention, comparative studies on job satisfaction are scarce (for exceptions see Origo & Pagani 2009, Sousa-Poza & Sousa-Poza 2000). We adopt a comparative perspective across five European welfare regimes, distinguishing a corporatist, liberal, social democratic, southern and post-socialist welfare regime (Blossfeld et al. 2006). Our findings support several dynamics in the job mobility – job satisfaction relationship that are stable across welfare regimes: internal mobility is more powerful in predicting job satisfaction than external mobility; and downward moves have a larger impact than upward moves. The experience of unemployment lowers satisfaction, even after re-employment. However, welfare regime differences also spur their own dynamics into the processes that determine job satisfaction. Most importantly, the experience of unemployment is particularly detrimental to