This paper contributed to life course research by analyzing individual, firm-specific and regional effects on employment trajectories. It was assumed that the benefit of education depends on the employment history, firms and regional structures; therefore, we combined the German LIAB, a linked employer-employee dataset, and data on regional characteristics from the Federal Employment Services (BA) and the Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development (BBSR). Based on this new and hierarchical struc-tured data set, a multilevel framework was deployed to evaluate employment trajectories in a two-stage procedure. First, job tenure was estimated by a Piecewise Constant Exponential model; then, an independent Competing Risks model with the three destination states “career
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advancement”, “no change” and “career decline” was performed to analyse the internal career paths.
The main findings can be concluded as follows. First, evidence suggested that individuals have different career prospects depending on the education degree they especially acquire in the first period of their life course. Second, long term current employment reduces scarring effects; thus, future employment trajectories can be stabilized. Third, firms offer different op-portunity structures which influence the chances and risks in employment careers in different ways; particularly, further training leads to more stable jobs and better promotion prospects. Fourth, regional factors hardly explain job exit rates, but the unequal internal career prospects in different types of region indicate a regional segmentation of the labour market.
In further research we will estimate another model for the year 2002 to control for different economic situations. Additionally, the effects of the regional characteristics should be investigated in more detail.