Gender, occupational, and age cohort consequences of the industrial transformation, 1980-1990

Existing research on industrial and occupational shifts has concentrated on how these changes have altered the profile of work or their consequences for particular segments of the labor force such as females or older workers. This paper offers a different perspective: it compares the gender experiences of the consequences of the industrial and occupational restructuring of the 1980s for the cohorts in the labor force at the start of the decade and examines hypotheses derived from three alternative theoretical perspectives. Using data from the 1980 and 1990 PUMS files, it shows that (1) the occupational careers of male and female workers who began the 1980s aged 25-54 were primarily influenced by the restructuring of work rather than by industrial shifts; (2) in every cohort women fared better than men in terms of occupational upgrading; (3) there was a loss of jobs with age that bore particularly heavily on males; and (4) scientific professionals lost jobs, raising questions about their importance to the "new economy." (C) 2002 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved.