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contraction differ somewhat from those of industrial expansion and contraction. Expansion of an occupation increases the rate of mobility between firms in an industry but not within firms. Contraction of an occupation increases the rate of mobility within firms (due to the redeployment of labor) and increases the rate of movement to unemployment but does not increase the rate of movement out of the industry (DiPrete and Nonnemaker 1997). The adverse effects of economic turbulence in either an industry or occupation are dampened by employer tenure.

Since the structure of the labor market affects both job mobility and wage growth, aspects of labor market structure account for the aggregate declines in job mobility and wage gain observed over the course of workers’ careers. One aspect of labor-market structure that plays a role in explaining the declining change in career rewards is the pyramidal shape of organizational and occupational hierarchies, which contain many more low- er-level than higher-level positions. Given this structure and the role of vacancy filling in promotion, the chances of promotion and wage growth linked to promotion decline with labor-market experience. To the extent that upward mobility is possible, workers entering a career line are in competition with others at the same level for advancement to the next highest level. Because jobs at the next level are filled from those occupying positions in the level below, entry to a job ladder and performance at each step on the ladder affect ultimate career attainments. Rosenbaum (1984) has described the process by which employees in a cohort are progressively differentiated throughout their careers in a series of implicit competitions as being like a tournament. Selections among the members of a cohort occur continually as careers unfold, and each selection affects the opportunity to advance further. As a result, individuals are distributed more and more to ‘‘winner ‘‘and ‘‘loser’’ paths, and interpersonal variance in wages rises with labor-market experience and firm tenure. Those who are not promoted are more likely to leave the firm, but their gain from doing so is less than the gain of those who are promoted internally.

According to human capital theory, the shape of wage trajectories over the career course is a function of the changing productivity of workers. Wage growth through labor-market experience

results from learning on the job that increases a worker’s productivity and value to the employer. On-the-job training occurs in formal training programs provided by employers or as a result of informal instruction by supervisors and coworkers and simply by doing the job. Time away from the job, in contrast, can lead to skill depreciation. Because investments in training are costly, these are concentrated in the early part of careers, leading to greater wage growth at early rather than later career stages. Formal and informal training in a particular firm and on particular jobs can provide knowledge and skills that are general or specific. General knowledge and skills are applicable in other firms and other jobs, whereas specific knowledge and skills are applicable only in the firm or job where they are acquired. As workers develop firmand job-specific human capital, they are less likely to leave that firm or job because their productivity and resulting wages are higher than they would be in another firm or job. Although productivity may be greater in the firm or job where specific human capital is acquired, increments in productivity decline over time. As a result of this decline and biological aging, productivity may be lower at the end of a career than it was earlier.

One problem with human capital theory is that the relationship between labor market experience and worker productivity has not been adequately tested. Labor-market experience may affect wages because it is a proxy for seniority if wages rise with seniority and job tenure regardless of productivity. For women, labor-market experience may be an outcome rather than a determinant of career mobility if entry into career lines offering little opportunity for advancement affects labor-force participation (Marini 1980; Marini and Fan 1995). Evidence on the relationship between labor market experience and productivity within occupations suggests that, although labor market experience has some bearing on productivity, its effect on career advancement is largely independent of productivity (Horowitz and Sherman 1980; Medoff and Abraham 1980, 1981; Maranto and Rodgers 1984). Much variability is also seen across occupations and work contexts in the extent to which work experience affects either productivity or earnings (Horowitz and Sherman 1980; Spilerman 1986). Evidence also contradicts the ‘‘tradeoff hy- pothesis’’—that individuals sacrifice earnings at

the beginning of their careers for better long-term career prospects. Individuals with lower earnings early in their careers actually have lower rather than higher job status and earnings later.

More recent economic explanations of the relationship between labor-market experience and wage growth have focused on new arguments about the role of productivity in shaping the desire of employers, especially those who make large investments in screening and training employees, to retain workers and motivate high performance over time (Lazear 1981; Lazear and Rosen 1981; Malcomson 1984; Bulow and Summers 1986). Promotions and wage increases are seen as a means of eliciting effort from workers when the monitoring of their efforts and outputs is prohibitively expensive. These explanations deviate from the view that labor is paid its marginal product in each short period, assuming that workers are paid their marginal product over the life cycle or in some cases in excess of their marginal product. So far, none of these explanations has an empirical basis, and, as single-factor explanations, they are unlikely to account for the diverse compensation schemes observed across occupations and work settings (Talbert and Bose 1977; Spilerman 1986). A further problem is that they ignore the role of nonmonetary incentives in retaining workers and motivating high performance.

Other economic explanations of career mobility have combined human capital theory and information theory to consider the role of imperfect information and the acquiring of additional information as influences on career decision making (e.g., Jovanovic 1979). As in human capital theory, voluntary job mobility is assumed to result from a comparison of the benefits derived from one’s current job with those that could be obtained from another job. The decision to search for or accept another job is argued to be affected by new information about either the current job or a possible alternative. Because certain aspects of a job cannot be assessed prior to employment, new information is argued to be acquired through actually working on the job, and this information affects assessment of the quality of the person-job match. Jobs that survive are those evaluated as a good match, or at least as a better match than could be obtained elsewhere. With increases in labor-market experience, workers acquire more information about the labor market and are better

able to demonstrate their performance, which in turn provides more information to employers. As a result, matches improve over the course of a career, and, because it becomes increasingly less likely that a better match can be found, job mobility declines. Although the role of information is implicit, a related argument is linked to the vacan- cy-based model of career advancement (Sørensen 1977). According to this argument, as time in the labor market increases, people who enter the labor market in a position below their optimum level because a better vacancy is unavailable have more time to take advantage of vacancies and to close the gap between their current and potential rewards. What these models do not consider is the path dependency of careers, whereby there are long-term effects of early job placements on later career outcomes. Job placement early in a career not only shapes worker experience and training but is used as a basis for screening by employers that affects later career opportunities.

Information about the labor market and specific alternative jobs may also change with labormarket experience in ways that affect assessments of the likelihood that a better alternative is available. At labor-market entry and during the early career, both occupational aspirations and the importance attached to a variety of job attributes decline. These changes suggest a diminished view of the labor market, which makes it less likely that a better alternative to one’s current job will be perceived to be available. As firm and job tenure increase, it is also likely that knowledge of specific alternative job opportunities declines, since the time since the worker’s last involvement in job search is longer and contacts with others who would be sources of information are fewer.

If opportunities for career advancement and wage growth are used by employers to retain workers who have firmand job-specific knowledge and skill, career advancement and wage growth may also decline over the course of individual careers because they become less necessary means of retaining workers. They become less necessary because increases in firm-and job-specif- ic knowledge and skills increase the extent to which a worker will be more valuable to the current employer than to an alternative employer and because the value of accrued employee benefits, including retirement benefits, makes it increasingly costly for a worker to change employers. As firm

and job tenure increase, personal relationships and familiarity with the work environment also increase, reducing the likelihood that a worker will change employers or jobs. There is also less time left as a career advances to recover the costs of a change of employer or job and achieve the same level of functioning as was attained with the current employer or a higher level (Groot and Verberne 1997).

WORKER CHARACTERISTICS

Given the structure of the labor market, particularly the local labor market where most job search occurs, entry into a career line is affected by worker characteristics, such as job-related credentials (e.g., education, intelligence, physical attributes), job preferences, and access to resources (e.g., information, material support, sponsorship by influential others). In some career lines, worker characteristics at entry may also influence career progression, whereas in others such characteristics may have little effect after access to a career line is obtained. If worker characteristics at entry continue to have an effect, they may do so in part because they influence subsequent on-the-job training and performance.

Most theoretical attempts to explain individual differences in career mobility have focused on individual differences in worker performance. In human capital theory, workers are seen as rational actors who make investments in their productive capacities to maximize lifetime income (Becker 1964; Mincer 1974). The investments usually studied are education and on-the-job training, although the theory applies to other investments, such as effort, job search, geographic mobility, and health. It is assumed that labor markets offer open opportunity and that earnings growth is a function of change in productivity due to how hard individuals work and to the ability, education, and training they possess. Individuals can increase their productivity not only through formal education but by learning on the job. Because investments in education and training are costly, workers concentrate their investments in the early part of their careers, sacrificing immediate earnings for better long-term career prospects. Although worker qualifications that may affect productivity have been found to be associated with advancement, these

associations are consistent with explanations other than that afforded by human capital theory. In the theory of vacancy-based competition, workers’ performance-related resources are also assumed to affect career advancement, but the mechanism by which they affect advancement is left unspecified (e.g., Sørensen 1977).

Sociologists generally view the relationships between education and experience, on the one hand, and career advancement on the other, as influenced primarily by the organizational, and even the broader societal, context in which the administrative arrangements that govern promotions and salary advancement arise. Spilerman (1986) has suggested that education and experience bear weaker relationships to promotion and earnings when organizational rules rigidly prescribe the temporal paths of occupational and earnings advancement. These rigid schedules are usually found in workplaces where the majority of workers are engaged in a very few career lines, or where multiple career lines exist, but there is little opportunity for transferring among them. Such schedules often result from unionization, since labor unions seek to standardize work arrangements. Even the effects of education and experience that exist under this type of personnel system vary across cities in ways suggesting an influence of general societal beliefs that educated and experienced workers should be paid more. Because such beliefs do not specify how much more, compensation schedules vary widely. Education and experience appear to bear stronger relationships to earnings in large nonunionized organizations that encompass many occupational specialties. However, even in these organizations, societal notions of equity and custom may affect wage structures. In Japan, for example, both seniority and family size are major determinants of salary in large companies (Dore 1973).

Sociological accounts differ from economic explanations in recognizing that the rewards of work derive from job occupancy and that a relatively enduring structure of jobs determines the relationships of individual effort, ability, and performance to work rewards. In the sociological view, jobs are assigned wage rates via processes operating at the societal and organizational levels; and the mechanisms that match individuals to jobs produce associations between individual effort, ability, and training, on the one hand, and work

rewards, on the other. Jobs differ in the routes by which they are entered and in the extent to which performance can affect work rewards.

What influences advancement is not the attributes of individuals per se, but their attributes in relation to organizational positions. Organizations define the criteria by which ability is identified. To the extent that ability is not tied to those criteria, it will not be recognized and rewarded. If individuals of limited ability are able by chance or other more calculated means to meet the criteria by which ability is identified, they will be assumed to have ability by an inference process in which the direction of causality is reversed. An important consequence of this system is that factors affecting access to positions, of which ability is only one, and factors affecting performance in accordance with organizationally recognized criteria, including the willingness to conform to organizational goals and practices, have an important influence on longterm career outcomes.

Given the importance of the structure of jobs in mediating the relationship between individual attributes such as education and experience and job rewards, it is not surprising that unchanging attributes have little direct effect on rewards within job status categories. However, they have an important effect on careers via their influence on access to positions in the structure of jobs. Education is a major determinant of access to job ladders and career lines, and movement within these produces relationships between education and experience and work rewards. The organizational hierarchies to which college graduates, especially those from preferred colleges, have access increase the effects of college on career attainments over time. These hierarchies are moved through via experience. Within at least some career lines, education increases rates of promotion and wage gain (Rosenbaum 1984; Petersen and Spilerman 1990; Sicherman and Galor 1990). Education bears a positive relationship to within-firm and withinoccupation mobility and a negative relationship to mobility between occupations, firms, and industries, as well as a negative relationship to moves to unemployment (Sicherman and Galor 1990; Cheng and Kalleberg 1996; DiPrete and Nonnemaker 1997). When mobility does occur between occupations and firms, education increases the likelihood that these moves are voluntary and in an upward direction. Education also helps to buffer workers

from economic turbulence. Young, educated workers are both helped less by organizational expansion and hurt less by organizational contraction (Rosenbaum 1984; DiPrete 1993; DiPrete and Nonnemaker 1997).

Over time, career histories become differentiated in the timing and occurrence of advancement. Early recognition and achievement relative to members of the same entry cohort have longterm effects on career mobility. Those receiving early promotions have more rapidly advancing subsequent careers and ultimately attain higherlevel positions and higher earnings than those not receiving early recognition (Stewman and Konda 1983; Rosenbaum 1984). The age when a person enters a position bears a negative relationship at career advancement (Petersen and Spilerman 1990; Rosenfeld 1992). The early recognition of ‘‘stars’’ and its cumulative effect on subsequent career movement has been argued to occur as a result of labeling processes that identify such individuals as especially able—as high achievers who are likely to achieve more.

One problem in research on career mobility has been the limited availability of actual measures of worker ability and performance. Most research has studied the effects of education; formal on-the- job training; and informal training acquired through experience in the labor market, in a firm, or on a job. This set of influences is not only limited, but measures of these influences have tended to be crude and indirect. Informal training through experience has usually been inferred from the durations of time spent in the labor market, in a firm, or on a job. Since direct measures of ability and performance have rarely been obtained, knowledge of the effects of ability and performance on career mobility remains limited.

In both theory and research, there has been relatively little attention paid to the influence of worker characteristics other than ability and performance. There is evidence that individual differences in work and job values affect entry into career lines and that these change over the career course, in part as a result of experiences in the labor market (Lindsay and Knox 1984; Judge and Bretz 1992). However, the effect of workers’ values, normative beliefs, preferences, and personality characteristics on career mobility has not been

studied, and individual variation in these characteristics has often been assumed to be either unimportant or nonexistent. Similarly, little attention has been paid to the influence of noncareer events and activities on career advancement. There has been some limited study of the effects of family roles, which indicates that marriage and children have different effects on the career advancement of women and men, but relatively little is known about the effects of family and other noncareer events and activities on career mobility.

Apart from ability and performance, the worker characteristics receiving the most attention in research on career mobility have been ascriptive characteristics such as gender, race, and ethnicity. The structure of the labor market mediates the relationship of these characteristics to job rewards, since these characteristics become a basis for the differentiation of job ladders and career lines, as well as a basis for access to the jobs within them (Spilerman 1977; DiPrete 1989; Marini and Fan 1995; Yamagata et al. 1997). Because other measures of worker characteristics and the process of employer evaluation and selection have received little research attention, however, understanding of the multiple factors that produce differences in career mobility among groups defined by ascriptive characteristics remains limited.

Another type of worker characteristic that has received some research attention is the social ties of workers, particularly as used in the process of job change. It has been argued that social networks provide a kind of capital—social capital—that is useful to workers in career advancement. Social ties of high status are seen as furthering career advancement more than those of low status, and it has also been argued that weak social ties are more helpful than strong social ties because weak ties provide a less redundant source of information and influence (Granovetter 1974; Lin 1990). There is evidence that workers do rely on others whom they know in the process of job change, but the extent to which social ties are a source of information and influence varies with the structure of the labor market and a worker’s place in it. In China’s largely state-controlled economy, a worker’s social ties are not used as a source of information but are a source of influence on state authorities with decision-making power over jobs. In market economies, social ties are used as a source of both

information and influence, although the extent to which they are used varies across countries and for different types of career lines (Wegener 1991; Bian and Ang 1997). In at least some countries, workers in lower-status positions are more likely to use social ties when changing jobs than workers in higher-status positions. Evidence has been inconsistent on whether the use of social ties in obtaining jobs produces better outcomes, but when social ties are used and have an effect, obtaining help from those of high status rather than low status increases job rewards. Empirical evidence on the influence of the strength of social ties has been inconsistent, in part because the strength of social ties has been defined and operationalized in a variety of ways. In some countries strong social ties have been shown to be more helpful than weak ones. In other countries weak social ties are more helpful for workers in jobs of high status, whereas strong social ties are more helpful for workers in jobs of lower status (Wegener 1991; Bian and Ang 1997).

SELECTION BY EMPLOYERS

Movement within a career line is affected not only by the characteristics of workers but by the characteristics and actions of those empowered by employers to make hiring and promotion decisions. Evaluation of performance and ability is usually based on incomplete information. In many jobs, performance is difficult to assess. Ability is even harder to assess, because it is inferred from performance. In addition, human perceptive capabilities are limited and variable. As a result, employers tend to rely on readily available information, or ‘‘signals,’’ such as the amount of education attained, where it was attained, the amount and types of prior job experience, observable personal attributes, and evidence of past performance such as the rate of career advancement and prior job status and earnings (Spence 1974). The use of such signals is particularly likely when job shifts are made between organizations and between job ladders within an organization rather than within an organization or a job ladder (Rosenfeld 1992). The criteria on which individuals are evaluated are therefore often superficial, and having the resources (i.e., money, knowledge, and skill) to identify the way the evaluation process works and acquire an appropriate set of signals plays an

important role in career advancement. Because of the difficulty of obtaining information, employers are susceptible to employees’ attempts to supply and manipulate information about themselves as well as others.

Another influence on the evaluation of ability and performance is attitudes and beliefs previously acquired by those with decision-making authority. Information is unconsciously filtered and interpreted through that cognitive lens. The effect of prior attitudes and beliefs is evident in the prejudice and stereotyping triggered by ascriptive characteristics such as gender, race, and ethnicity (Hamilton 1981; Marini 1989), which have been a focus of theories of discrimination in the labor market (see, e.g., Blau 1984).

In addition to the difficulties that arise in assessing performance and ability, personal relationships and political coalitions influence mobility. As noted, there is growing evidence that personal contacts and relationships can constitute important sources of information and influence in gaining access to jobs. For workers seeking advancement, they can provide information about available positions and how to apply or present oneself favorably as a candidate. They can also result in preferential treatment based on personal liking and trust, shared interests, or expected gain on the part of those making hiring and promotion decisions. For employees responsible for hiring and promotion, personal contacts and relationships can provide information about candidates that reduces the risk of error in the selection process and increases the likelihood that individuals with similar interests and a sense of loyalty or indebtedness to them will be advanced. Personal contacts and relationships can also affect decisions if they lead to a desire to gain favor with others supportive of a candidate. Because those making hiring and promotion decisions can act to advance their own interests and the interests of others, a candidate’s position in workplace political coalitions can affect advancement prospects.

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MARGARET MOONEY MARINI

OCCUPATIONAL PRESTIGE

Individuals have repeatedly demonstrated an ability to rank occupations according to their prestige, a relative social standing in a society. Occupational prestige is one of the most empirically studied aspects of stratification structure in modern societies. Social stratification theories, however, differ

in their views of the concept of prestige. Wegener points out that theories vary primarily in their suppositions of the foundation on which prestige is based, that is, achievement, esteem, honor, or charisma. Wegener also distinguishes two types of stratification theories, one that views prestige as a hierarchy of positions and the other as an attribute of socially closed groups.

By and large, stratification theories that emphasize order in society (e.g., functionalist theories) conceive prestige as an attribute of individuals or of individual social positions that form a hierarchy. Stratification theories that emphasize conflict (e.g., Weber) think of prestige as designating social aggregates, or individuals within social aggregates, influenced by social closure processes. (Wegener 1992, p. 255)

Despite such variation in theoretical views, most empirical studies share the notion that occupational positions are hierarchically ordered along a single dimension as judged by the individuals in the society. Efforts to measure such a concept involve a reputational approach in which respondents are asked to evaluate occupations.

The modern study of occupational prestige dates to a landmark survey fielded in 1947 by the National Opinion Research Center under the direction of Cecil C. North and Paul K. Hatt (Reiss 1961). Although others had conducted earlier investigations in the United States. NORC’s national sample and broad coverage of the occupational hierarchy became the model for later inquiries. Perhaps the best known product of the North-Hatt study was Duncan’s Socioeconomic Index (SEI) (1961), which assigned to each detailed occupational category a predicted prestige score based on the age-standardized education and income characteristics of occupational incumbents reported by the 1950 Census of Population. Although this index proved to have somewhat different properties than prestige, it exploited the limited occupational titles evaluated by the North-Hatt study to construct the first metric scale of socioeconomic status for all occupations.

In the 1960s, a second generation of studies was carried out by NORC (Hodge et al. 1964). Piecing together surveys from 1963, 1964, and 1965, Siegel (1971) generated the first prestige

scale for all Census occupations. This scale served for twenty years as the foundation of socioeconomic status scores, and it became the backbone of Treiman’s International Prestige Scale (1977). In 1980, however, a major change in the occupational classification system employed by the U.S. Bureau of the Census called into question scores based on earlier classifications of occupational titles, since there was no sensible way to match old and new categories. In 1989, the NORC General Social Survey undertook another periodic sounding of Americans’ evaluations of the general social standing of occupations (Nakao and Treas 1994). In the 1989 survey, a total of 740 occupational titles were selected to ensure reasonable coverage of the 503 detailed occupational categories of the 1980 census classification system. These titles were rated by a sample of 1,166 respondents, each of whom rated 110 occupations. The evaluation involved sorting cards, each bearing one occupational title, onto a sheet displaying a nine-rung ladder of social standing (from ‘‘1’’ for the lowest possible social standing to ‘‘9’’ for the highest possible). Based on their ratings, a score was calculated for each occupation and was converted to a scale so as to have a logical range from 0 (lowest) to 100 (highest) of prestige scores. For use in data analyses of most social surveys, in which occupations are coded according to occupational categories, scores assigned to categories, not titles, become necessary. Thus, using the scores for occupational titles in respective categories, a score was computed for each of the 503 detailed occupational categories of the 1980 census. The 1989 survey, which was the first to collect evaluations for all occupational categories at one time, yielded new prestige scores. These scores became the basis for updating the Socioeconomic Index (Hauser and Warren 1997).

Five generalizations may be drawn from the empirical research on occupational prestige.

First, very different methods for soliciting occupational evaluations yield very similar prestige hierarchies. Presenting respondents with an occupational title (e.g., electrician), the North-Hatt study asked them to ‘‘pick out the statement that best gives your personal opinion of the general standing that such a job has.’’ Five response categories, ranging from ‘‘excellent standing’’ to ‘‘poor standing,’’ were presented, along with a ‘‘don’t know’’ option. One might readily fault the ambiguous

instructions calling for both a ‘‘personal’’ opinion and a reading of ‘‘general’’ standing. Nonetheless, the results proved virtually identical to those of the 1964 and 1989 surveys, which asked respondents to sort cards bearing occupational titles onto a ‘‘ladder of social standing,’’ the method that became the primary standard against which all other inquiries are evaluated (Nakao et al. 1990). The 1964 study went on to ask respondents to sort occupations onto a horizontal ruler according to another specific dimension (e.g., freedom and independence, perceived income, how interesting the work). However different the tasks, the correlation with social standing evaluations was over .90 for eight of nine dimensions.

Even when respondents are instructed to cluster occupations according to their similarity (rather than to rank them by social standing), multidimensional scaling methods reveal that one of the organizing principles behind judged similarity is a prestige hierarchy. Burton (1972) first demonstrated this with a nonrandom subsample of volunteers solicited from an advertisement in the Harvard student newspaper. Kraus et al. (1978) achieved similar results with a representative sample of 463 urban Israelis. To confirm that people view occupations in terms of an up/down classification scheme, Schwartz (1981) showed that ranking occupations according to ‘‘vertical’’ paired adjectives (e.g., top/bottom) yields results highly correlated with prestige scores, while rankings based on evaluative (e.g., kind/cruel), potency (e.g., big/little), and activity (e.g., slow/fast) dimensions fail to replicate prestige orderings. Studies that directly asked the respondents on what basis they rated occupations, or that asked them to rate occupations on selected dimensions such as ‘‘value to the society’’ or ‘‘power,’’ did not culminate in conclusive results. Individuals’ evaluations seem to be based on their judgments of the ‘‘overall desirability’’ of occupations (Goldthorpe and Hope 1974; Hauser and Featherman 1977). In short, the prestige hierarchy is so central to how we evaluate occupations that it emerges from virtually any reasonable effort to elicit it.

Second, overall prestige rankings are very stable over time. Hodge et al. (1964) reported a correlation of .99 between the 1947 North-Hatt study and their own in the mid-1960s. Nakao and Treas (1994) found a correlation of .96 between

the mid-1960s and 1989. This stability is not surprising. First, the relative income and education levels associated with various occupations are quite stable over time (Treiman and Terrell 1975). Second, to the extent that prestige is fixed by the division of labor and workplace authority, we do not expect the prestige of flight attendants to soar above that of pilots.

This is not to say that prestige never changes. Hodge et al. (1964) noted modest gains for bluecollar occupations, an upswing in scientific occupations and the ‘‘free’’ professions (e.g., ‘‘physician’’), and a downturn in artistic, cultural, and communication occupations. Nakao and Treas (1994) compared the scores for 160 occupational titles evaluated in both 1964 and 1989 and found that the mean score moved up from 45.2 to 47.5 while the standard deviation declined from 17.3 to 15.8. They noted especially that the bottom of the American occupational prestige distribution shifted upward between 1964 and 1989. Low-status service and farming occupations especially came to be more favorably evaluated (see Table 1). This may be, in part, due to changes in the occupation itself. Farmers, for example, have undergone changes and have come to be seen as ‘‘agribusiness’’ owners. Thus, change in prestige may occur not only because of the succession of new generations who hold different views, but also because all age groups change their thinking about the relative standing of occupations. Changes in the general public’s familiarity with an occupation can also affect its rating, as demonstrated for ‘‘nuclear physicist’’ between 1947 and 1963 (Hodge et al. 1964). Thus, individual occupations change even though the overall ranking of occupations remains quite stable over time. The growing prestige of low-status occupational titles warrants further study, especially because it is inconsistent with socioeconomic trends observed in the workforce and in the workplace-the growing inequality in earnings, the decline of unionized blue-collar employment, the influx of traditionally devalued workers like women and immigrants, and the absence of systematic skill upgrading for blue-collar workers (Nakao and Treas 1994).

Third, prestige evaluations are surprisingly comparable from one society to another. Arguing that industrialization everywhere demands a similar organization and reward of work, Treiman