Occupational shifts across sex-type boundaries in the Swedish labour market

This study examines sex differences in employees’ patterns of mobility between occupations of different sex proportions between 2002 and 2003 and how occupational sex segregation in Sweden is influenced by employees’ occupational shifts. The empirical analysis is based on large-scale and nationwide data sets with a panel design. The results show that employees’ occupational shifts strengthen sex segregation across occupations, especially female ones. Moreover, when we compare employees who in 2002 were in occupations with a given sex proportion, employees shift towards more sex-typical occupations relative to employees of the opposite sex, and this is particularly true for women and older employees. The analysis also shows that whereas the outflow from occupations of certain sex proportions is sex-biased, the sex composition of the inflow of other employees is mostly equal in magnitude to the outflow, partly explaining why the level of overall occupational sex segregation remains almost unchanged between these 2 years.