ABSTRACT
Social mobility can be defined as the movement of individuals among the social positions within a society, which form a structure of social inequality. The German labour market has also been characterised by a relatively high division of labour between genders and a high degree of gender segregation in employment. In a qualification-based labour market, occupational mobility tends to be comparatively low, contributing to inequality of type social closure, collective polarisation, individual accumulation. After the immediate post-war period, which was characterised by economic hardship, there was a phase of prosperity in the labour market lasting for about two decades, before unemployment became a growing problem. Structural change in the German labour market has obviously become salient across cohorts of labour market entrants rather than within cohorts. Historical trends are non-monotonic. The cohorts born around 1930 and 1940 experienced a minimum of mobility and heterogeneity; the careers of the 1920 birth cohort reflect the turbulence caused by World War II.
