Viktor Decker

📈 Results
Vocational graduates perform more routine tasks than university graduates. This explains 11% of the income gap but no differences in unemployment risk. Returns to routine tasks decline with age affecting vocationally trained workers disproportionately due to higher average routine scores.

⚙️ Method
We use decomposition techniques on two rich datasets—the German Socio-Economic Panel and the BiBB/BAuA Employment Survey—to study task differences and their effects across the career span.

🔍 The Puzzle
Why do workers with vocational and tertiary degrees experience persistent differences in income and employment outcomes? Beyond skill differences, we explore whether disparities in the performance and payoffs of routine tasks play a role.

📄 Happy to announce that my second PhD paper on how routine tasks affect education-based inequalities on the labor market was just published in Social Science Research—joint work with @labussieremarie.bsky.social and @thijsbol.bsky.social.

Full article:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

A reminder to submit your abstract to our workshop in May in Amsterdam! Please reskeet/spread the word.

Thanks to @jkofferhaus.bsky.social at the BIBB for organizing this event so well and to all participants incl. @kadwe.bsky.social @vdecker.bsky.social @thijsbol.bsky.social for the very stimulating exchanges!

What are the big debates in quantitative sociology methods right now? Stuff that we really are still debating the answer to? Lots of debates in causal inference, I know, and definitely in the Age-Period-Cohort area too. Anything in sampling methodology? Measurement?

Would love to be added to this package!

I have seemingly become the department's starter pack creator, so on request by @dieuwkezwier.bsky.social I made a small pack with social and behavioural scientists at the University of Amsterdam. Heavy on the Sociology so far but leave a comment and I'll add you. #UvA

CAREER workshop 2025 - Career Project Call for papers for the CAREER workshop "Skills and Careers in Changing Labour Markets" to be held in Amsterdam on 26-27 May 2025.

📢The ERC CAREER project is organizing a workshop on “Skills and Careers in Changing Labour Markets” in Amsterdam on 26-27 May 2025!
👉With keynotes from Siwei Cheng and Heike Solga
Interested? Chech our call for papers and apply!
careerproject.eu/CAREER_works...

Our findings suggest that workers with general educational qualification may not adapt to labor market change by using their flexible skill sets to switch occupations. Instead, particularly those with tertiary degrees seem to have very stable late careers.

Based on data from Germany, we find that workers with general educational qualification switch occupations more frequently than vocationally trained workers in the first half of their working careers but trajectories converge thereafter.

Interested in how occupational mobility trajectories vary between workers with different educational backgrounds? You are in luck, the first paper of my PhD just got published in Sociological Science. Joint work with @thijsbol.bsky.social and Hanno Kruse.

sociologicalscience.com/articles-v10...

Yesterday, I presented an overview of my dissertation at ISS in Cologne.
While preparing the proposal/talk, I realized that the overarching theme of my dissertation is the integration of refugees in Germany. A good discovery after a year of doctoral studies :D
Many thanks for the helpful feedback!

Hi new world 🐦
I'm a Sociology PhD student researching education-based differences in working careers. I mainly use German panel data to the delight of my Dutch supervisor at University of Amsterdam. First publication in Sociological Science soon to come!

#AcademicSky #PhDSky #HiSciSky #Sociology