The duration of family-related employment interruptions : the role of occupational characteristics

After childbirth, women often interrupt their careers. These interruptions are associated with negative consequences for later employment, which are greatly influenced by the duration of the interruption. We analyse the influence of occupational characteristics on this duration, as occupations are crucially important for career trajectories in Germany. Specifically focusing on occupational sex segregation, the occupational wage level and the share of part-time workers in occupations, we test two competing hypotheses: on the one hand, lower wages in female-dominated occupations should lead to longer employment interruptions due to lower opportunity costs. On the other hand, a higher ratio of part-time workers should lead to shorter interruptions due to better reconciliation between family and work. In addition, we analyse whether the proportion of women in a given occupation influences the duration of employment interruptions. We test these hypotheses using data from the National Educational Panel Study (starting cohort 6), combined with occupational information from the Sample of Integrated Labour Market Biographies and the German Microcensus. We focus on family-related employment interruptions after the birth of the first child between 1992 and 2010. The results of our discrete event history models indicate that higher wages lead to shorter breaks, while the part-time rate and the proportion of women in an occupation have no significant effects.