Westerman, Johan & Charlotta Magnusson | 2025
Social Science Research, vol. 127
Recent studies on occupational structure and individual mobility suggest that the number of categories in the occupational structure vastly exceeds the limited number of classes in commonly applied schemes (Cheng and Park, 2020; Lin and Hung, 2022; Toubøl and Larsen, 2017; Villarreal, 2020). This discrepancy underscores the inadequacy of coarse class schemes in capturing the complexities of occupational structures. We argue that a continuous, multi-dimensional representation offers a nuanced and efficient tool for understanding research questions across diverse topics such as gendered occupational choices, political views and values, intergenerational transmission of occupational attributes, and the nature and trajectory of structural labor change.
Our contribution is to adopt a methodology that allows for the continuous differentiation of occupations across multiple dimensions, rather than confining them to discrete clusters. This approach aligns with the longstanding sociological tradition of representing occupational structures using continuous scales (Duncan, 1961; Cain and Treiman, 1981; Ganzeboom et al., 1992; Chan and Goldthorpe, 2004; Goldthorpe and Hope, 1974; Hadden et al., 2004; Lambert and Griffiths, 2018; Le Grand and Tåhlin, 2013; Prandy and Lambert, 2003; Treiman, 1977).
