INDUSTRIAL RESTRUCTURING AND THE MOBILITY RESPONSE OF AMERICAN WORKERS IN THE 1980S

Scholars recognize that labor market structure affects job mobility. However, existing research rarely considers the impact of structural change on mobility. I develop a model for how the size of organizational labor markets and the instability resulting from industry expansion, contraction, and equity reorganization influenced rates of internal mobility, external mobility, and unemployment during the industrial restructuring of the 1980s. Analysis of data from the Current Population Surveys, the Current Employment Statistics program, the Small Business Data Base, and the Mergers and Acquisitions database shows that structural change has predictable effects on job mobility and that labor market structure channels mobility in predictable ways. However, the results also show that the ability of labor market structure to buffer environmental turbulence was limited during the turbulent 1980s, and that the ''flexible'' character of American labor markets had important consequences for blue-collar and service workers in the American work force.