Early Unemployment and Subsequent Career Complexity: A Sequence-Based Perspective

We aim to examine how previous unemployment affects future unemployment and career complexity over the life course. Theory suggests that unemployment triggers negative chains of ‘low-pay-no-pay’ circles. Using longitudinal data on men aged 18-64 from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we employ sequence-based methods to quantify career complexity and dynamic panel models to test our hypotheses about the process of cumulative disadvantage on employment careers for the previously unemployed workers over time. We find that unemployment ‘breeds’ unemployment and increases career complexity over the life course. However, unemployment at older ages leads to much higher career complexity than at younger ages.