• Journal of the Korean Regional Science Association
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.49-63
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• 2023

This study investigates the occupational mobility patterns of young wage employees at the local level of the labor market and empirically examines the interplay between worker-level and local labor market-level determinants between 2010 and 2020. The 4th to 14th waves of the Youth Panel 2007 were integrated with the Korea Network for Occupations and Workers and the Local Area Labor Force Survey for estimation using hierarchical linear model. Our results indicate that Gross Regional Domestic Product per capita is key determinant of occupational upward mobility. Also, Estimates of employment size, population density, and the unemployment rate of local labor market have different effects depending on the education level and occupational location of youth workers, suggesting that the effects of structural factors of local labor market may not be distributed equally among all youth wage workers. The findings have policy implications regarding the recent rise in inequality and polarization in local labor markets.