ABSTRACT
"Work history" is a description of the socioeconomic activities of an individual over the course of his or her lifetime. This chapter provides a review of what we know about the work histories of women and men in the United States and what we need to find out to gain an adequate understanding of work histories of women and men. The pattern of labor-force participation over the life cycle has changed dramatically for women, and substantially for men, in the period since 1940, with very important implications for patterns of occupational mobility over the life course. Even accepting the claim that labor-force discontinuity accounts, in part, for the inferior occupational mobility chances of women, the reasons for this association remain unclear. Career continuity, in the sense of a sequence of jobs that follows a clear and systematic upward trajectory with respect to rank, status, or income is probably characteristic of only a small fraction of the labor force.
