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CHAPTER 3
Demographic changes and challenges in Europe with special focus on Germany 47

Naturally, these changes on the internal labour market within enterprises also
influence external labour markets in sectors, regions and society as a whole.
One important development is that the classic pattern of the working lifespan is
gradually losing its dominance in working life: the prototype of the male
breadwinner in full-time employment, who works until the age of 65 (or above),
is gradually diminishing. That does not mean that employees will work less, but
that the work is more evenly distributed over a lifetime. However, changes in
working life patterns will not develop rapidly. So far, job hopping concerns only
special groups in the labour market (such as younger professionals). Thus until
now, regular employment is still the norm for most employees. However,
increasing variety of working life patterns for employees is emerging: some
men, but especially women, alternate periods of work with periods of leave,
education and caring responsibilities. Employees attach more importance to a
good balance between work and private life (Köhler et al., 2008; Schmid, 2002).
The current debate on the changing world of work concludes that the shift from
an employee-based industrial society to an entrepreneur-based knowledge
society will bring about a new situation where individuals have to take over direct
responsibility for their own work and lives, and thus individuals will be the
entrepreneurs of their own working power and lives ( ).
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3.4. Theoretical approach

To put discussion on the changing world of work and demographic pressure
into a broader perspective, this chapter confronts these developments with
the analytical concept of transitional labour markets, developed in the mid-
1990s by Schmid and his colleagues at the Social Science Research Centre,
Berlin (Schmid, 1993; 1994; 2002; 2006; Schmid et al., 1996), and with a
concept which tries to describe transitional forces especially for older
employees on transitional labour markets: the ʻpush, pull, jump, stay, (re)entryʼ
approach (Bredgaard and Larsen, 2005; Sørensen and Møberg, 2005).

3.4.1. Concept of transitional labour markets
In the past two decades, the concept of transitional labour markets influenced
scientific and policy discussions regarding current developments on internal
and external labour markets. It delivers an interesting – in the first instance,

( ) Discussion on this concept was initiated in Germany by the Kommission für Zukunftsfragen der
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Freistaaten Bayern und Sachsen (1997).