Comparing cohorts born between 1951 and 1994, we document and interpret changes in the wage differential among graduates from secondary education with a vocational and a general curriculum. The wage gap initially increased and then decreased. We find that these changes cannot be attributed to simple compositional shifts in the economy, but instead relate to … Continue reading
Automation is likely to affect developing countries in different ways to the way automation affects high-income countries. The poorer a country is, the more jobs it has that are in principle automatable because the kinds of jobs common in developing countries—such as routine agricultural work—are substantially more susceptible to automation than the service jobs—which require … Continue reading
In Germany, almost 15 per cent of all first-year students leave higher education without obtaining a degree. The German post-secondary education system is tracked, however, and many dropouts enter the labour market with additional non-tertiary vocational training certificates. We therefore examine whether higher education dropouts benefit from additional vocational qualifications obtained outside higher education and … Continue reading
Gender differences in rates of full-time and part-time paid work after childbirth are an important driver of differences in hourly wages between men and women. This is because they affect the amount and type of labour market experience that men and women build up, and this experience affects the hourly wage levels they can command. … Continue reading
In this work we propose a methodology for developing an occupational classification by applying Natural Language Processing methods, such as document clustering and distributed word representations, to UK online job adverts. The new occupational classification will be directly aligned with employer needs and group jobs into occupations based on similar skill requirements. Unlike the existing … Continue reading
We evaluate the relationship between immigrant and native employment using the Swedish administrative employer-employee linked LOUISE database. We find that if firms increase employment of immigrant workers by 10 percent, they increase employment of Swedish workers within the same occupation of the immigrants by 1.2-2.8 percent, and they increase employment of Swedish workers within other … Continue reading
Britain has lagged behind the G7 countries in labour productivity in recent years. There is also an emerging concern about a potential post-Brexit skills deficit. Upskilling the existing workforce via on-the-job training may be a vital policy tool available. This paper empirically examines the upskilling impact of a UK government-backed accreditation scheme, Investors in People … Continue reading
Women are disproportionately in low paid work compared to men so, in the absence of rationing effects on their employment, they should benefit the most from minimum wage policies. This study examines the change in the gender wage gap around the introduction of minimum wages in Ireland and the United Kingdom. Using survey data for … Continue reading
This paper has examined the causal relationship between earnings and high skilled migration inflows under two central selective policies: employer sponsored admission and the points- tested scheme. We attempted to isolate the endogeneity by instrumenting average local area worker earnings with time series variations in global commodity prices, interacting with cross-sectional variation in the commodity … Continue reading
The gap in university enrollment by parental education is large and persistent in many countries. In our representative survey, 74 percent of German university graduates, but only 36 percent of those without a university degree favor a university education for their children. The latter are more likely to underestimate returns and overestimate costs of university. … Continue reading
Between 1963 and 2000 the labor force participation rate among males in the age group 60–64 in Sweden fell from around 85 to 55 percentage points. However, since then, the labor force participation has started to rise again and is now above 75 percent in the age group. Although the long term development for female … Continue reading
Refugee immigration to Sweden has been sizeable for a long time and reached an all times high in 2015 in terms of the number of asylum seekers. The numbers of granted residence permits for refugees have also been high in later years and can be expected to increase in the next few years due to … Continue reading
Pushed by current socio-economic projections, a rising number of governments and international institutions are trying to bring closer the world of education and training and the world of work: graduates’ employability, innovation and entrepreneurship, ICT use in tertiary education, are just some of the topics on this agenda. The level of youth unemployment across the … Continue reading
Disability benefits provide an essential safety net for many people of working age whose health prevents them from engaging in paid work. But many countries are increasingly concerned about the fiscal sustainability of high and growing disability insurance (DI) dependency rates. One of the reasons is that disability benefits may themselves contribute to low participation … Continue reading
This paper estimates the effects of entering the labour market when the economy is weak on subsequent living standards using consistent long-running household survey data from the UK. In line with previous research, we find persistent scarring effects on employment and earnings. However, we also provide the first estimates of impacts on net household incomes … Continue reading