PhD Seminar - Matthew Nibloe (UCL)

Abstract: The UK labour market has undergone major changes in recent decades, with a 12% decrease in the public sector’s share of total UK employment between 2010 and 2018 alone. There are many angles through which these changes can be analysed, and the one explored in this project is the one of the role of changing sorting dynamics. We document changes in the evolution of first sector choices across cohorts of labour market entrants and the changing attractiveness of the public sector by educational ranks. This is made possible at previously infeasible granularity and longitudinality by a new link of administrative education data with universal firm-level data. Using variance decomposition tools, we analyse the extent to which cohort dynamics in occupational choice reflect the dynamics of observable variables and how much lies in the residual (in other words, the realm of changing “preferences”). Additionally, we assess the extent to which changes in the dynamics of occupational choice can be attributed to the 2010 austerity package by using variation in exposure to austerity cuts at the departmental level. The latter allows us to estimate an elasticity of ‘inflow’ to the austerity cuts.

Location: 321 Drayton House