A network analytical approach to the study of labour market mobility

The aim of this paper is to present a new network analytical method for analysis of social mobility between categories like occupations or industries. The method consists of two core components; the algorithm MONECA (Mobility Network Clustering Algorithm), and the intensity measure of Relative Risk (RR), which enable us to identify clusters of inter-mobile categories. We apply the method to data of the labour market mobility in Denmark 2000-2007 and demonstrate how this new method can overcome some long standing obstacles to the advance of labour market segmentation theory: Instead of the typical theory driven definition of the labour market segments, the use of social network analysis enable a data driven definition of the segments based on the direct observation of mobility between job-positions, which reveals a number of new findings.