So grateful for meeting all these great women in political economy! Also big shout-out to the organizers @palmapolyak.bsky.social & @dustinvoss.bsky.social and everyone who made this inspiring week happen 🫶

Happy to be in lovely Madrid for #EPSA2025 🇪🇸 If you‘re interested in how long-term occupational upgrading maps onto voting across German districts, grab a sandwich & come to our panel on the „Geographies of discontent“, tomorrow 13:10-14:50!

Joint work with Daniel Oesch @unil.bsky.social now beautifully formatted in first open access issue of @europeansocieties.bsky.social

We ask: have European regions followed similar or divergent trajectories in terms of occupational change over time?

Conclusion: We should be careful in assuming a linear relationship between a place’s urbanity and its economic opportunities 🏙️ 🏡, but studying the quality of employment change can add valuable insights about regionally diverging life chances.

The largest job gains in the top quintile: Eichstätt (+17pp), Böblingen (+14pp), Heilbronn (+13pp). The largest losses in the top quintile: Saalekreis (-5pp), Greiz/Gera (-5pp), Elbe-Elster (-5pp).

But: urban–rural divide in Germany interacts with east–west and north–south divides. While southern Germany has gained high-wage jobs at above-average rate, many eastern and northw. districts struggle to keep up with nat. employment upgrading.

As a result, by 2019, 30% of jobs in big cities belonged to highest paid occupations, while this share is less than 15% in rural districts - here, the majority of people works in lowest paid jobs.

Findings: Yes, employment upgrading (more high-wage jobs) between 1993 and 2019 was much stronger in urban areas. Rural regions lag behind, especially in east and northw. Germany.

Using a 2% sample of individuals registered in the German social security system (@iabnews.bsky.social 👏), I track employment change across wage-based quintiles. This tells us which regions have seen growth/decline in (high-paying) jobs.

With subnational economic inequality on the rise, we see lively discussions about the divide between thriving cities and the "left-behind" countryside. Looking at employment change in 330 German districts over nearly three decades, I argue that this view may be too simplistic.

How does employment change differ across German regions & is it all about the urban-rural divide? 🏙️ 🏡

Happy to see the first paper of my PhD now out in Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie and Sozialpsychologie!

Read the paper #OpenAccess here doi.org/10.1007/s115... and 🧵👇:

Für Zeit Online analysieren @juliustroeger.bsky.social, @benjazehr.ch, Michael Schlieben und ich die Wahlkreisergebnisse aller Bundestagswahlen seit 1949. Besonders spannend finde ich insbesondere das interaktive Tool & Karte zu den historischen Hochburgen der Parteien.
www.zeit.de/politik/deut...

Its not just literature ;) www.nytimes.com/2020/06/30/s...