Geographies of Occupational Attainment

一个工人如何在一个特定的地方要求一个特定的职业，或者一个地方如何容纳一个从事特定职业的工人干部，这些都是至关重要的经济和社会问题。这项研究对个人获得和使用特定职业的技能以及当地特定职业劳动力的可获得性采取了制度性的方法。研究项目的目的是比较不同地区、不同行业和不同个人特征的计算机程序员培训来源(按类型和地点)。这项研究将首先使用人口普查等次要数据来调查美国所有大都会统计地区的职业达标率与各种制度因素之间的关系。将通过电话和对主要雇主和机构领导人的面谈，对五个程序员比例较高的中型大都市地区进行案例研究。要调查的关键问题是：性别和种族；目前的就业安排和任期；个人作为程序员接受最初培训的大约年龄和地点；职业和地点选择的动机；较早的职业和父母的职业；以及进一步培训的发生率和赞助。这两种类型的面试信息将被用来将劳动力规模、雇主规模、就业做法和增长率的地方特征与程序员获得和保持技能的地点和方式联系起来。对于劳动力中的任何一个人来说，一个人的职业和所在地在很大程度上决定了一个人的就业结果。对该地区来说，当地训练有素的工人的可获得性是当地经济福祉的关键。这个项目提供了对地点和职业成就之间的一般过程的理解。此外，拟议的项目选择了一种特别的职业，即计算机程序员，这是人们非常感兴趣和争论的对象。拟议研究的贡献在于它结合了以下内容：承认体制对个人行为和区域结果的影响；关注培训和移徙决定；关注妇女和少数群体在白人男性主导的职业中的道路；所有大都市区域的次要数据以及五个特定区域的探索性访谈数据。

How a worker comes to claim a particular occupation in a particular place, or how a place comes to contain a cadre of workers with a particular occupation, are vitally important economic and social questions. This research takes an institutional approach to the individual's gaining and using occupation-specific skills and to the local availability of occupation-specific labor. The objective of the research project is to compare the sources (by type and location) of computer programmers' training across regions, industrial sectors, and personal characteristics. The research will first use secondary data such as censuses to investigate the relationships between rates of occupational attainment and various institutional factors for all Metropolitan Statistical Areas in the United States. Case studies of five mid-sized metropolitan areas with a high proportion of programmers will be made via phone and in-person interviews with key employers and institutional leaders. The key questions to be investigated are: sex and race; current employment arrangement and tenure; approximate age and location at which the individual gained original training as a programmer; motivations for occupational and locational choices; earlier careers and parents' occupations; and incidence and sponsorship of further training. The information from both types of interviews will be used to relate local characteristics of labor-force size, employer size, employment practices, and growth rates to the locations and ways in which programmers gained and maintained their skills. For anyone in the labor force, one's occupation and one's location largely determine one's employment outcomes. For the region, the local availability of trained workers is key to local economic well-being. This project provides an understanding of the general process between location and occupational attainment. In addition, the proposed project selects one particular occupation, computer programmer, that has been the object of much interest and debate. The contribution of the proposed research lies in its combination of: recognition of institutional influences on individual behavior and regional outcomes; attention to training and migration decisions; attention to the paths of women and minorities within an occupation dominated by white men; and secondary data for all metropolitan regions as well as exploratory, interview data in five specific regions.