Cumulative Advantage in Job Quality: Career Trajectories and Inequality in Sweden, 1968–2022

<p>Cumulative (dis)advantage is well documented for wages and occupational prestige, but whether similar patterns characterize non-monetary working conditions remains unclear. This study examines career trajectories in job quality—job complexity, physical demands, negative stress, and flexibility—using Swedish Level-of-Living Survey panel data from 1968 to 2022 (5,042 respondents; 14,857 observations). We ask whether inequalities in job quality widen or narrow across career stages, whether social groups differ in within-career change, and whether workers who begin from more favorable positions subsequently gain more or less. We estimate adjusted inequalities across career stages using random-slope growth curve models and differences in within-career change using individual fixed-effects models. Job quality generally improved over the first 20–25 career years among cohorts born from the 1940s onward. Educational inequality was large and persistent: workers with more education held better jobs throughout and gained more within their careers. Gender inequality emerged over time: men and women began near parity, but men gained more. Within social groups, however, workers who started with better job quality improved less, indicating convergence. Adjusting for occupation reduced career-stage inequalities more than differences in within-career change. Thus, inequalities may widen between social groups even as differences within groups narrow over the career.</p>