What Drives Career Moves? Insights from Labor Market Modeling

Just wrapped up a thought-provoking seminar at KD²Lab with Prof. Dr. Jed DeVaro from California State University, East Bay! Jed presented his latest research on "Endogenous Career Mobility and Labor-Market Visibility", offering deep insights into how promotions, lateral career moves, and wage dynamics unfold in real-world labor markets. The paper is joint work with Oliver Gürtler, Antti Kauhanen and Joseph Kuehn.

Using data from a large Finnish employer-employee panel, his structural model not only captures these dynamics but does so with impressive accuracy. It was great to see how the model can quantitatively explain the full range of observed labor market patterns.

It was particularly compelling to see how these patterns remain consistent across industries and geographies, and how counterfactual simulations reveal shifts in mobility and wage outcomes as labor-market visibility changes at different job levels.

A big thank you to Jed for sharing his work and to all who joined us for the discussion!

Prof. Dr. Jed DeVaro