일자리 이동 성과의 분석: 직종과 학력에 기초한 계급 개념을 중심으로

Job transitions are important because they link individual socioeconomic attainments of employees to structural properties of labor markets. Sociologists suggest that social class is important in explaining social inequality. Although individual and structural factors affecting job transitions have been investigated so far, the relationship between class and job transitions has not been examined in detail. The purpose of this study is to fill this gap and try to ascertain the relationship between class and job transitions. This study analyzes the effects of classes on the rewards of job transitions in the Korean labor market. The study shows the following. First, when employees change their jobs within the employment sector, changes in social class do not significantly cause changes in income. Employees rarely become self-employed. When they become self-employed, the middle class with organization assets shows more favorable changes in income than the working class. Therefore, on the whole, job transitions hardly enhance the inequality in income between classes, and social class hardly restricts individual efforts of maximizing socioeconomic rewards through job transitions. Second, generally speaking, social class does not significantly cause changes in job satisfaction. However, when employees change their jobs within the employment sector, upward class mobility shows more favorable changes in extrinsic job satisfaction than downward class mobility; when employees become self-employed, the middle class that possesses organization assets shows less favorable changes in intrinsic job satisfaction than the working class. The results imply that extrinsic and intrinsic aspects of jobs may be fairly independent of each other, and that the characteristics and rewards of jobs in the employment sector may be fairly different from those in the self-employment sector.