Week 5a: Getting ahead in professional careers: earning promotions & precarious work Flashcards
How do economists think wages are determined?
Interaction between supply and demand of the labour market
Where there’s a demand and shortage of work, wages tend to increase
What is the primary labour market?
Where the best jobs are:
- security and good pay
- obtainable by having education and skills coming from higher class status
- harder to work in if have previously worked in secondary market (seen as unstable)
What is the secondary labour market?
Less secure/poor wages + working conditions
lower education requirement
fewer career ladders
High turnover
What is an Internal labour market?
existing within primary labour markets
AKA career ladders; within organizations
How are labour markets segmented?
By race and sex; women and racial minorities overrepresented in the secondary labour market
What are concerns about a segmented labour market?
discrimination; harder to build coalitions to improve working conditions
How does social stratification help us understand social mobility?
People need to take certain steps to climb upwards; education is the KEY determinant with the exception to celebrities
What is open social mobility?
individual achievements allow you to climb higher in society
What is closed social mobility?
not much movement allowed, ascribed social status denotes what you can do
What is the difference between INTERgenerational mobility and INTRAgenerational mobility?
Inter: between generations (your kids having a better life than you did)
Intra: within your own lifetime (ex. growing up poor and becoming wealthy)
What is the difference between vertical and horizontal mobility?
Vertical: moving upwards in your careers
Horizontal: changing careers
What is the main determinant for Socio-econ status (SES)?
Parents SES
Explain social mobility in Canada
The differences in gains between generations is not as much because older people are also gaining more
What are the key findings in Friedman, Laurison and Miles’ “breaking the ‘class’ ceiling” study?
Elite professions are dominated by children coming from upper class families; While there is upward mobility for some, those coming from lower classes don’t have the same pedigree so they don’t get the same benefits
How do subjective factors of a employees influence their performance review?
When the criteria is unclear on how to improve, employers rely more on subjective attributes; cognitive biases
