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Academic Literature
Gender gap – Gender-stereotyping managers
In a recent IZA Discussion Paper by Aarhus University researchers Tor Eriksson, Nina Smith and Valdemar Smith use data from a survey conducted among managers to examine gender stereotypes and self-stereotyping. Based on a large field study of around 3,000 Danish managers at all levels (from CEOs to managers at low levels), the authors calculate … Continue reading
Labor Force Participation in US – Has fallen more in areas where relatively more opioid pain medication is prescribed
The labor force participation rate in the U.S. has declined since 2007 primarily because of population aging and ongoing trends that preceded the Great Recession. The participation rate has evolved differently, and for different reasons, across demographic groups. A rise in school enrollment has largely offset declining participation for young workers since the 1990s. The … Continue reading
General vs Vocational Education – Vocational training should not substitute for providing strong basic skills
Policy proposals promoting vocational education focus on the school-to-work transition. But with technological change, gains in youth employment may be offset by less adaptability and diminished employment later in life. To test for this trade-off, we employ a difference-in-differences approach that compares employment rates across different ages for people with general and vocational education. Using … Continue reading
Immigrants with University Education in Canada – A large earnings gap with their Canadian‑born counterparts, even in the long term
The number of international students pursuing education in countries with advanced economies has been rising rapidly over recent decades. International students are often regarded as an important group of young and well‑educated individuals from which to select permanent residents. However, a few studies from Australia, Canada and the United States have shown that the earnings … Continue reading
Home Ownership and Displaced Workers in Netherlands – Job losses result in longer commutes
As in many other countries, the Dutch owner-occupied housing market and labour market suffered from strong negative developments during the Great Recession that started in 2008. The large scale at which the transaction prices and home property values fell in the Dutch housing market is very rare — it previously occurred in the period 1978 … Continue reading
Precarious jobs in Canada – The Employment Precarity Index (EPI)
By the end of the 20th century, there was general agreement that, across the globe, labour markets were in transition and employment was becoming less secure. It was argued that the prevalence of secure full-time employment with benefits, known as the Standard Employment Relationship (SER), was in decline. Alternative forms of employment were growing, most of which were temporary … Continue reading
Integration of University-Educated Immigrants in Canada – Pre-landing Canadian work experience plays an increasing role
International students are increasingly regarded as an important group of young and well-educated individuals from which to select permanent residents. In December 2015 there were 353,000 international students with a valid study permit in Canada, up from 84,000 in December 1995. Of the international students admitted to Canada in the early 2000s, 25% became permanent … Continue reading
Alternative Work Arrangements in US – From 10.1 percent in 2005 to 15.8 percent in 2015
To monitor trends in alternative work arrangements, we conducted a version of the Contingent Worker Survey as part of the RAND American Life Panel (ALP) in late 2015. The findings point to a significant rise in the incidence of alternative work arrangements in the U.S. economy from 2005 to 2015. The percentage of workers engaged … Continue reading
Non-Cognitive Skills – University education has significant effects study finds
Recently, a public debate has emerged on whether universities teach the right skill-sets that prepare students for a continuously changing and globally expanding labor market. Various articles from leading scholars and journalists emphasize that university education falls short of teaching students creativity, socioemotional skills, attributes of ownership, and the ability to learn on the fly. … Continue reading
Investment in training – Implementing a training contract reduced quitting by around 15%
Firms may hesitate to provide training which is general enough that it can be used in other jobs, if employees are likely to leave shortly after being trained. A “training contract,” which penalizes the employee for quitting quickly after being trained, may help solve this problem. Using data from a large US trucking company, we … Continue reading
Older Workers in EU – Integration strategy with job search training, hiring subsidies and health promotion are the most effective
Although the labour market situation of older workers has significantly improved over time, opportunities to work at older age still vary considerably across EU countries. To trace diverging developments and to assess what works best in retaining employment and bringing older unemployed back to work developments in five countries are analysed: Germany, France, the Netherlands, … Continue reading
Gender Wage Gap in Developed countries – Considerable heterogeneity and differences in wages remain quite large
Despite the increased attachment of women to the labour force in nearly all developed countries, a stubborn gender pay gap remains. This chapter provides a review of the economics literature on the gender wage gap, with an emphasis on developed countries. We begin with an overview of the trends in the gender differences in wages … Continue reading
Long-Term Unemployed – A signal of lower motivation leading to lower hiring chances
Recent evidence from large-scale field experiments has shown that employers use job candidates’ unemployment duration as a sorting criterion. In the present study, we investigate the mechanisms underlying this pattern. To this end, we conduct a lab experiment in which participants make hiring decisions concerning fictitious job candidates with diverging unemployment durations. In addition, these … Continue reading
Finland – Is the unemployment rate a good measure of labour market slack?
Observations that the official unemployment rate does not describe labour market slack sufficiently broadly have led to the development of broadened measures of unemployment. These types of measures are regularly used, at least in the United States and have also occasionally been explored by the ECB. Such measures seek to include, in addition to people … Continue reading
The Working Poor in US – The highest among seventeen affluent democratic nations (as of 2000)
In-work poverty became a prominent policy issue in the United States long before the term itself acquired any meaning and relevance in other industrialized countries. With America’s embrace of an employment-centered antipoverty strategy, the working poor have become even more of an issue. This paper reviews some key trends, drivers and policy issues. How much … Continue reading
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