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Labour Force (labour + force)
Terms modified by Labour Force Selected AbstractsThe Impact of Youth Unemployment Policy: A Shift of Workers into the Skilled Labour ForceLABOUR, Issue 3 2004Trine Filges The aim of YUPs is to increase the number of young people acquiring skills and thereby reduce unemployment. We consider the assumption of a completely successful YUP, which delivers higher skills, and analyse what happens when the number of skilled workers increases relative to the number of unskilled workers. The analysis uses a search model with heterogeneous workers and jobs. [source] The decline of child labour: labour markets and family economies in Europe and North America since 1830ECONOMIC HISTORY REVIEW, Issue 3 2000Hugh Cunningham This survey of the ,adulting' of national and family economies argues that understanding of the segmentation of labour markets and of the male breadwinner has been impoverished by a failure to consider age alongside gender, and that we are at best in a situation where contextualized studies may provide some insight into reasons for the decline of child labour. With respect to family economies, there has been very little study of the timing or cause of the diminution of children's contributions, or of how, if at all, that decline is related to the rise in married women's participation in the labour force. [source] Public employment and labour market performanceECONOMIC POLICY, Issue 34 2002Yann Algan Summary We explore the consequences of public employment for labour market performance. Theory suggests that public employment may not only crowd out private employment, but also increase overall unemployment if, by offering attractive working conditions, it draws additional individuals into the labour force. Empirical evidence from a sample of OECD countries in the 1960,2000 period suggests that, on average, creation of 100 public jobs may have eliminated about 150 private sector jobs, slightly decreased labour market participation, and increased by about 33 the number of unemployed workers. Theoretical considerations and empirical evidence, however, suggest that the crowding out effect of public jobs on private jobs is only significant in countries where public production is highly substitutable to private activities and the public sector offers more attractive wages and/or other benefits than the private labour market. [source] Facing the Age Wave and Economic Policy: Fixing Public Pension Systems with Healthcare in the Wings,FISCAL STUDIES, Issue 1 2005David A. Wise Abstract There are two overriding problems faced by ageing societies. One is the financing of public pension (social security in US terms) programmes. The other is paying for healthcare. This paper considers the healthcare issue briefly, emphasising that the issue arises primarily because of advances in medical technology. Better medical technology will improve healthcare in the future, but more advanced technologies also cost more. The focus of the rest of the paper is on the public pension problem. The emphasis is on the early retirement incentives inherent in the provisions of most public pension programmes around the world, the reduction in the labour force participation of older people caused by these incentives, and the large fiscal implication of the inducement of older people to leave the labour force. These results are based on the Gruber,Wise ongoing international social security comparison project. [source] Questioning the impact of the ,graduatization' of the managerial labour force upon the management of human resources in the Scottish hotel industryINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CONSUMER STUDIES, Issue 4 2000Arthur Ingram Abstract This paper outlines the findings of a questionnaire survey returned by 125 Scottish hotels from a sample of 500 small and middle-sized enterprises. We asked questions on the level of impact that hospitality graduates have had upon human resource management practices within individual units. The research reports that, although the cumulative graduatization of the managerial workforce appears to be under way, the main route to a permanent management post still remains one of practical work experience, rather than the attainment of a hospitality-related degree. Although manpower planning is widely used by line managers for managing the conditions of local/external labour markets and operatives' jobs, there is less evidence of a systematic approach to the management of graduate careers/skills or of the management of internal job structures and labour market processes in order to improve the quality of customer service. Our work suggests a need for smaller hotels to strike a fresh balance between traditional operationally driven approaches to people management and strategic human resource management frameworks. [source] Can a purchaser be a partner? nursing education in the English universitiesINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HEALTH PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT, Issue 2 2001E. Meerabeau Abstract Since the early 1990s, public sector management in England has been exhorted to follow the example of the private sector, and ,quasi-markets' have been established, for example in the health service. A quasi-market also exists between the NHS and higher education for the purchasing (or procurement) of nursing education. This paper uses policy documents such as the National Health Service Executive Circular (March 1999) on ,Good Contracting Guidelines' for Non-Medical Education and Training, plus other relevant literature on the commodification of higher education, quasi-markets and contract theory to examine this market, and the confusion of two rhetorics, those of competition and partnership. Nursing occupies a marginal place in higher education in England, having only recently become part of it. The emphasis of the quasi-market on the output of a trained ,fit for purpose' labour force combines with professional attempts to create an academic discipline, in complex ways which are as yet underanalysed. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] The necropolis of Vallerano (Rome, 2nd,3rd century AD): an anthropological perspective on the ancient Romans in the SuburbiumINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF OSTEOARCHAEOLOGY, Issue 2 2006A. Cucina Abstract The present study investigates the skeletal remains of individuals who were part of a Roman suburban community, in order to assess lifestyle and living conditions in the town's outskirts during the Roman Imperial age. The existence of the community was linked to the functioning of one of the many villas that surrounded the town of Rome at that time. In order to assess health, several indicators were explored, including mortality, oral pathologies and specific (cribra orbitalia) and aspecific (linear enamel hypoplasia) indicators of nutritional and physiological impairment. The sample, which probably represents the labour force of the villa, shows a high number of individuals dying in the early adult age and very few living beyond 50. Subadults were frequently affected by pathological conditions which may indicate anaemia and/or inflammations and infections, as witnessed by the frequency of cribra orbitalia. Growth was also impaired, as the individuals suffered from systemic disturbances during the early years of life that led to the formation of linear enamel hypoplasia (LEH) in their teeth. Frequency of LEH is very high, as well as its multiple occurrence through time (2.44 defects per individual) and its onset occurs from the earliest age classes. Diet, on the other hand, does not seem to have been particularly carbohydrate based. Oral pathologies are very low, which is consistent with meat consumption complementing a diet rich in low-calorific products of agriculture and seemingly low in refined carbohydrates. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Christian democracy, social democracy and the paradoxes of earnings-related social securityINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOCIAL WELFARE, Issue 1 2002Johan Jeroen De Deken This article compares the retirement policies of Belgium and Sweden in order to reveal the different incentive structures built into the pensions systems prevailing in countries that are taken to represent different approaches to welfare capitalism. It addresses the question of why in a Christian Democratic welfare state that is said to grant pensions rights on the basis of merit and past work performance one can find extremely low labour-force participation rates among elderly workers, while in a Social Democratic welfare state that is supposed to grant pension rights relatively independent of past labour-market performance, one can find quite high participation rates amongst that section of the labour force. This apparent paradox is explained in terms of the different purposes of the early-retirement schemes in the two countries: in Belgium they were primarily part of a strategy to combat (youth) unemployment, in Sweden they had more to do with reforms that sought to accomplish a ,humanisation of work' by softening the abrupt transition from work into retirement. [source] Learning and skills formation in the new economy: evidence from GreeceINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT, Issue 4 2002Stella Zambarloukos In today's knowledge,driven economy, education and training are considered major factors affecting a society's level of economic attainment and growth. Lack of information,related knowledge and skills, in particular, are among the prime factors likely to delay a country's progress towards the information society. Experience, however, has shown that an educated labour force does not automatically translate into dynamic economic development and technological innovation. The human resource potential is not a simple outcome of the education system but it is a much more complex process that involves tacit knowledge, learning by doing and on,the,job training. This means that skills and knowledge acquired depend not only on the educational system but on firm organisation and culture as well as ties between organisations. The present study examines the relationship between skill supply, firm organisation and learning by means of interviews in 23 firms in Greece. It shows that a major problem faced by SMEs in peripheral European countries is the lack of in,house capabilities and knowledge which limits the amount and type of learning that takes place. Finally, the article argues that policy,makers should institute educational policies and training programmes that will compensate for the inability of Greek firms to provide a learning environment. [source] Exploring the mismatch between skills and jobs for women in Saudi Arabia in technical and vocational areas: the views of Saudi Arabian private sector business managersINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT, Issue 2 2002John R. Calvert Saudi Arabia's rapid development has highlighted the shortage of national technical manpower and the subsequent need to recruit non-Saudi technical workers, on the one hand, and the difficulty of replacing these workers with qualified Saudis, on the other. Therefore successive Development Plans have tried to raise the quality and quantity of technical and vocational education for both men and women. In 1995/96 only 5 per cent of Technical and Vocational Education (TEVT) enrolled students were female. This compares with an average of 29 per cent in other Islamic countries and 45 per cent in Japan (UNESCO, 1997, 1999). Part of this may be due to the preferences of female students in education, part due to the structure of TEVT in Saudi Arabia, part due to the availability of technical and vocational jobs available for women after completing their training and part due to the natural place of women in Saudi society. The Seventh Development Plan (2000,2004) assumes that the private sector will play a very significant role in employing a Saudi labour force including both men and women. As part of a comprehensive study concerning the factors affecting women's employment in the Saudi private sector private sector business managers in four large cities were surveyed to see what factors they felt were important. The main factors affecting employment of women in technical and vocational education were seen by the managers as those relating to the structure of TEVT education in Saudi Arabia rather than preferences of women or pressures from society. [source] Incentives for International Migration of Scientists and Engineers to JapanINTERNATIONAL MIGRATION, Issue 4 2009Yukiko Murakami Many developed countries, welcome foreign talent, and Japan is no exception. The Japanese government has developed programmes for expanding the acceptance of foreign labour in specialized and technical fields, in order to compete with foreign nations in the global economy and accommodate the highly specialized domestic industrial structure. This paper focuses on scientists and engineers (S&E) as a component of the highly skilled labour force, and examines their incentives for migrating to Japan, which is one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world. According to a survey conducted in 2004, the majority of S&E working in Japan migrated from Asian nations, and many obtained their doctoral degrees in Japan and continued to stay in the country to work. Key incentives for migration are Japan's high level of science and technology, opportunities to acquire cutting-edge knowledge, and prospects for improving performance in an environment with large budgets, superior equipment and facilities, and good quality human resources. In particular, the technological environment is influential for S&E from countries with a significant technological gap when compared with Japan. However, this does not mean that S&E are indifferent to monetary rewards. The salary gap, which is considered to be a major factor in international mobility in to traditional economic theory, has also proven to be a significant incentive, particularly for S&E from countries where the gap in gross domestic product (GDP) per capita compared with Japan is large. In addition, cultural and social aspects of Japan attract mainly young S&E. The attractiveness of Japanese culture, opportunities to learn the Japanese language, and chances to build a network of personal contacts are important incentives for migration. This study presents some policy implications for countries competing over capable S&E. [source] The Role of Immigrants in the Italian Labour MarketINTERNATIONAL MIGRATION, Issue 3 2001Murizio Ambrosini In little more than a decade, Italy has become a country characterized by immigration from abroad. This pattern is far removed from what central-northern European countries experienced during the 1950s and the 1960s. Immigration has not been explicitly demanded by employers, nor has it been ruled by agreements with the immigrants' countries of origin, nor perceived as necessary for the economic system. For all these reasons, immigration has been chaotic and managed in an emergency and approximate way, even though it is deemed useful and is requested by the "informal" as well as the "official" economy. Following presentations of statistics on trends in the phenomenon, three issues are analysed: - how immigrants are integrated into a labour market that has not called them and into circumstances characterized by the absence of public policies to help them in their job search. - whether it is possible to separate regular immigration involved in the "official" market from irregular immigration in the hidden economy, considering advantages of the first and harmful effects of the second for the Italian socio-economic system. - whether it is appropriate to address complementarity between immigrant labour and the national labour force in a country with 2,500,000 unemployed workers and heavy territorial unbalances. [source] Youth Transitions and Employment in GermanyINTERNATIONAL SOCIAL SCIENCE JOURNAL, Issue 164 2000Walter R. Heinz In the 1990s, the timing and duration of youth transitions has become variable because of cultural modernisation and the declining stability of careers. In particular, the German ,dual system' of Vocational Education and Training (VET) has come under pressure of globalisation and labour market deregulation. Despite economic turbulence, the main features of the VET have been maintained. The apprenticeship route is still highly accepted-two-thirds of the cohort of school-leavers are passing through it. It continues to provide standardised occupational qualifications and a context for socialisation. It supplies a skilled labour force and keeps youth unemployment low-despite shortcomings in standards of social equality and a slow pace in adapting to changes in technology and work. For the future, the ,left modernisers' strategy of upgrading skills remains possible, by reforming the apprenticeship system and main-taining the 'high-skills, route for transition from education to work. In transition studies structural analysis should be combined with research on institutional regulations, transition pathways, and individual agency. [source] Universal age pensions in developing countries: The example of MauritiusINTERNATIONAL SOCIAL SECURITY REVIEW, Issue 4 2006Larry Willmore Mauritius, a small developing country located in the Indian Ocean east of Madagascar, has provided older residents with non-contributory age pensions since 1950. The scheme became universal in 1958. Mild income tests were reintroduced in 1965 and again in 2004. Targeting proved to be unpopular, and universality each time was restored. Government added a mandatory, contributory tier in 1978 that does not replace the flat, non-contributory pension. Instead, it promises participants (approximately half the labour force) an income-related benefit to top up the universal pension. The author examines Mauritius's long experience, drawing lessons from it for other developing countries. [source] 100 years of change: examining agricultural trends, habitat change and stakeholder perceptions through the 20th centuryJOURNAL OF APPLIED ECOLOGY, Issue 2 2009Martin Dallimer Summary 1The 20th century has witnessed substantial increases in the intensity of agricultural land management, much of which has been driven by policies to enhance food security and production. The knock-on effects in agriculturally dominated landscapes include habitat degradation and biodiversity loss. We examine long-term patterns of agricultural and habitat change at a regional scale, using the Peak District of northern England as a case study. As stakeholders are central to the implementation of successful land-use policy, we also assess their perceptions of historical changes. 2In the period 1900 to 2000, there was a fivefold rise in sheep density, along with higher cattle density. We found a reduction in the number of farms, evidence of a shift in land ownership patterns, and increased agricultural specialization, including the virtual disappearance of upland arable production. 3Despite previous studies showing a substantial loss in heather cover, we found that there had been no overall change in the proportion of land covered by dwarf shrub moor. Nonetheless, turnover rates were high, with only 55% of sampled sites maintaining dwarf shrub moor coverage between 1913 and 2000. 4Stakeholders identified many of the changes revealed by the historical data, such as increased sheep numbers, fewer farms and greater specialization. However, other land-use changes were not properly described. For instance, although there had been no overall change in the proportion of dwarf shrub moor and the size of the rural labour force had not fallen, stakeholders reported a decline in both. Spatial heterogeneity of the changes, shifting baselines and problems with historical data sources might account for some of these discrepancies. 5Synthesis and applications. A marked increase in sheep numbers, combined with general agricultural intensification, have been the dominant land-use processes in the Peak District during the 20th century. Stakeholders only correctly perceived some land-use changes. Policy and management objectives should therefore be based primarily on actual historical evidence. However, understanding stakeholder perceptions and how they differ from, or agree with, the available evidence will contribute to the successful uptake of land management policies and partly determine the costs of policy implementation. [source] Parametric and semiparametric estimation of sample selection models: an empirical application to the female labour force in PortugalJOURNAL OF APPLIED ECONOMETRICS, Issue 1 2001Maria Fraga O. Martins This paper applies both parametric and semiparametric methods to the estimation of wage and participation equations for married women in Portugal. The semiparametric estimators considered are the two-stage estimators proposed by Newey (1991) and Andrews and Schafgans (1998). The selection equation results are compared using the specification tests proposed by Horowitz (1993), Horowitz and Härdle (1994), and the wage equation results are compared using a Hausman test. Significant differences between the two approaches indicate the inappropriateness of the standard parametric methods to the estimation of the model and for the purpose of policy simulations. The greater departure seems to occur in the range of the low values of the index corresponding to a specific group of women. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Skills under threat: the case of HIV/AIDS in the mining industry in ZimbabweJOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, Issue 5 2006Caroline N. Matangi Abstract The Zimbabwe mining industry is currently battling to arrest further spread of the HIV/AIDS crisis in workplaces, especially its impact on labour productivity. Labour in the closed community of mines has been greatly susceptible to HIV/AIDS infection. The current AIDS incidence in the mine sites is estimated at a weighted average of 15,per,cent amongst miners, with the largest category of workers,the 30,39 years age group,also constituting the worst affected category. Given the current state of the country's economy and consequently its adverse impact on the lifestyle of miners, the pandemic is expected to increase. This paper builds on the work of the ILO (1995) involving a survey of 18 various firms/institutions. The survey was carried out in Zambia in order to assess the impact of HIV/AIDS on the productive labour force. The survey revealed that many of the firms are experiencing irregular work attendance, ,wasted' training as some of the trained workers are constantly ill or die, high medical bills, funeral costs and reduced productivity and profits. An analysis of data on the main causes of death in 1993 shows that at least 61.8,per,cent of deaths could be attributed to causes that are very closely related to HIV/AIDS complications. Based on points highlighted by respondents and analysis of symptoms suffered, it was observed that HIV/AIDS tended to affect most general workers (36.8,per,cent), followed by the lower management (30.9,per,cent) and the middle management (20.6,per,cent). Comparatively, 11.8,per,cent of the deaths in 1993 belonged to the top management. Although it is hard to appreciate the meaning of the figures without knowledge of the number of people in each category, it nevertheless helps to form a clear picture of the impact of HIV/AIDS on industry. This paper seeks to further investigate the impact of HIV/AIDS on the productive labour force, by focusing on one particular industry,mining,using a blend of research methods to collect the data. This paper examines the impact of HIV/AIDS on the productive labour force and management responses. It forms part of the findings of data gathered in 2001 in the mining industry in Zimbabwe, to examine factors affecting management responses to HIV/AIDS in the mine sites. Zimbabwe is a country with a complex historical legacy of mine labour. This phenomenon can largely be attributed to the production oriented nature of the mining industry. Mines focus mainly on mineral extraction and as a result the bulk of mine workers tend to be production workers whose skills have developed over long periods of time. Production workers on mines have a tradition of long-term employment. This phenomenon has meant that labour in the mines is hard to replace as a result of skills, especially tacit knowledge, acquired over many years. Thus while the recent closure of some gold mines, largely due to low commodity prices, has meant that more miners are available in the labour market, this situation has not necessarily eased the process of replacing labour lost to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, as certain skills are firm specific. Production workers are predominantly male with the bulk falling in the 35,39 years age group. Most mine workers reside in mine villages, a colonial legacy that ensured miners were close to the workplace. The village system is a system of housing labourers, which demonstrates capitalistic methods of controlling labour and minimising costs. Of significance in this study's background is how the village system has come to be viewed as a factor in the spread of HIV/AIDS in the mining communities, because of its ,closed' nature. It is against this complex historical backdrop that the paper turns to examine the impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic on production workers and management responses to the crisis using the Resource Based View of the Firm model (RBV), one of the theories in the Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) tradition. RBV was chosen for this study out of many HRM models that exist, because this theory, in particular, explains why it is advantageous for sites to use their ,unique' firm based resources in order to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. Given this rationale it was, therefore, presumed that this theory would best apply in mines battling with the adverse impact of HIV/AIDS on productivity, especially in the light of the harsh national economic climate, which would likely place limitations on response mechanisms. Further, the issue of firm-specific skills was also taken into consideration as an important factor in the mines, limiting their ability to resort to external solutions. Thus, given these factors, RBV was deemed the most appropriate model. The study finds that the pandemic depresses labour productivity through a number of significant ways: increased rate of HIV/AIDS induced absenteeism gradual labour turnover as a result of AIDS induced morbidity; and consequently declining skills availability, particularly firm-specific skills. Maintaining labour productivity in the face of gradually diminishing skills and indisposed labour will be key to softening the adverse economic consequences of the pandemic in the mines. To reduce the threat to labour productivity, mines must find ways of utilising, to the maximum extent practicable, existing skills. Results indicate that a move towards the utilisation of existing miners is the most favoured response mechanism in most mines. Utilising existing miners enables mines from spending financial resources on avoidable recruitment and training and quite often mechanisation, which may not necessarily be compatible with the old infrastructure in certain mines. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] New Mothers' Labour Force Participation in Italy: The Role of Job CharacteristicsLABOUR, Issue 2005Massimiliano Bratti In this paper we use newly available individual-level data from the Longitudinal Survey of Italian Households to investigate the factors associated with female labour force participation after the birth of the first child. We focus on the role of pre-marital job characteristics and find that new mothers who worked without a contract are less likely to participate, while those who worked in the public sector or in a large private firm have a higher probability of being in the labour force after childbearing. We suggest that these effects could be at least partly attributed to differences in the level of job protection and employment stability enjoyed by workers. This implies that in Italy women with highly protected and stable jobs might find it easier to combine career and family, whereas those who are less sheltered by the legislation might be more likely to be inactive after becoming mothers. [source] Distortionary Taxation and Labour Market PerformanceOXFORD BULLETIN OF ECONOMICS & STATISTICS, Issue 2 2001Riccardo Fiorito Quarterly estimates of consumption, capital and labour tax rates are provided for six major OECD countries. We then use the ,stylized facts' methodology to evaluate the strength, sign and phase of cyclical comovements between tax rates and labour market variables. Labour taxes distort labour market de-cisions and help explain why the unemployment rate is so high in continental Europe. However, labour taxes cannot be the only determinant of diverging unemployment rates since the labour force is also reduced by higher taxes. Finally, we offer some preliminary structural evidence showing employment growth in particular to be negatively related to the taxation of labour. [source] Zukunft der Arbeit und Arbeit der Zukunft in DeutschlandPERSPEKTIVEN DER WIRTSCHAFTSPOLITIK, Issue 2 2006Carsten Ochsen The main finding is that the reduction of the labour costs cannot reduce the aggregated unemployment rate substantially. An important conclusion is that the skill upgrading of the labour force is slower than that of labour demand. The future of work in Germany lies not in low paid low skilled jobs, but in high(er) skilled occupation. [source] Immigration, employment relations, and health: Developing a research agendaAMERICAN JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL MEDICINE, Issue 4 2010Joan Benach Abstract Background International migration has emerged as a global issue that has transformed the lives of hundreds of millions of persons. Migrant workers contribute to the economic growth of high-income countries often serving as the labour force performing dangerous, dirty and degrading work that nationals are reluctant to perform. Methods Critical examination of the scientific and "grey" literatures on immigration, employment relations and health. Results Both lay and scientific literatures indicate that public health researchers should be concerned about the health consequences of migration processes. Migrant workers are more represented in dangerous industries and in hazardous jobs, occupations and tasks. They are often hired as labourers in precarious jobs with poverty wages and experience more serious abuse and exploitation at the workplace. Also, analyses document migrant workers' problems of social exclusion, lack of health and safety training, fear of reprisals for demanding better working conditions, linguistic and cultural barriers that minimize the effectiveness of training, incomplete OHS surveillance of foreign workers and difficulty accessing care and compensation when injured. Therefore migrant status can be an important source of occupational health inequalities. Conclusions Available evidence shows that the employment conditions and associated work organization of most migrant workers are dangerous to their health. The overall impact of immigration on population health, however, still is poorly understood and many mechanisms, pathways and overall health impact are poorly documented. Current limitations highlight the need to engage in explicit analytical, intervention and policy research. Am. J. Ind. Med. 53:338,343, 2010. © 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source] Regional and local labour market prospects: the importance of ageing in workforce developmentPOPULATION, SPACE AND PLACE (PREVIOUSLY:-INT JOURNAL OF POPULATION GEOGRAPHY), Issue 5 2006Anne Green Abstract Overall, the labour force in the UK is ageing, although at different rates in different areas. This poses challenges for workforce development, and has implications not only for older workers, but for everyone, everywhere. However, demography is only one element in labour supply. It needs to be considered alongside trends in participation rates and in a broader policy and cultural context, and alongside likely changes in labour demand, in order to gain a picture of regional and local labour market prospects. The thrust of government policy is to raise employment rates amongst older people (aged 50,69) and to promote ,active ageing'. The decline in employment rates amongst older men evident in the 1980s has been reversed, but participation rates remain low by earlier standards. Shifts in the industrial and occupational structure of employment mean that there is likely to be a growing demand for customer care and service skills, which older people are well-placed to provide. Yet estimates of ,replacement demand' show that some of the most pressing workforce development issues are experienced in declining sectors and occupations, with an older than average age profile. Examples include agriculture and social care in Cornwall, where there is a lack of new recruits to replace those retiring. It is concluded that improved local intelligence on labour market flows and prospects is needed to inform skills and learning priorities. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Balancing move and work: women's labour market exits and entries after family migrationPOPULATION, SPACE AND PLACE (PREVIOUSLY:-INT JOURNAL OF POPULATION GEOGRAPHY), Issue 1 2006William A. V. Clark Abstract A substantial literature has examined the nature of mobility and migration and the link to workforce participation. In general that literature has documented the disadvantages to women who move or migrate with a partner during the mobility or migration process, but it suggests, especially for the US, that the disadvantage is temporarily limited. This study of the same process in the British labour market reaffirms a temporary deficit-effect of two-worker migration for women, but unlike the US labour market the process of re-entry seems slower. There are modest monetary gains from mobility and migration, but these gains come for some families only when women enter the labour force after migration. The study reconfirms the importance of gender in the migration and mobility processes. Income, for women, recovers more slowly if a birth was registered in the migration interval. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] A New Specification of Labour Supply in the MONASH Model with an Illustrative ApplicationTHE AUSTRALIAN ECONOMIC REVIEW, Issue 1 2003Peter B. Dixon MONASH is a dynamic general equilibrium model of the Australian economy. This article describes a new labour-market specification for MONASH in which people are allocated in year t to categories according to their labourmarket activities in year t , 1. People in each category plan their labour supplies by solving an optimisation problem. Via these problems, we introduce the assumption that people in employment categories supply labour more strongly to employment activities than do people in unemployment categories. Thus we find that employment-stimulating policies in t , 1 increase labour supply in t by shifting the composition of the labour force in t in favour of employment categories and away from unemployment categories. We illustrate this idea by using MONASH to simulate the Dawkins proposal to combine a freeze on award wage rates with tax credits for low-wage workers in low-income families. We find that the Dawkins policy would generate a significant short-run increase in employment. With the increase in employment generating an increase in labour supply, the employment benefits of the policy would persist over many years. However, in the long run, we would expect the effect of the policy on aggregate employment to be small and to depend on how the policy affected the ratio of real after-tax wage rates to unemployment benefits. [source] A Cohort Analysis of the Determinants of Employment and Labour Force Participation: Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Australians, 1981 to 1996THE AUSTRALIAN ECONOMIC REVIEW, Issue 4 2002M. C. Gray A synthetic cohort analysis of the probability of employment and participating in the labour force for Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians is presented in this article. [source] Graduate density, gender, and employmentTHE BRITISH JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY, Issue 3 2002Malcolm Brynin ABSTRACT The expansion of higher education is often viewed as reflecting increased demand for skills, whether related to technological change or the growing complexity of the economy. It is also linked to widening pay differentials between the poorly and highly educated. There are reasons, however, to question these associations. Even if demand for graduates is growing the supply of graduates might as a result of the status derived from having a degree still exceed this. The demand for graduates itself need not be wholly tied in with upgrading of the labour force. Graduates could be part of a more flexible workforce who increasingly undertake non-graduate work, thus downgrading their labour-market position. LFS (Labour Force Survey) and BHPS (British Household Panel Study) data are used to show that there has been no major shift in the distribution of graduates in the British labour market, that career starts are increasingly at a lower status point, and that there is a negative effect of graduate density on wages. There are also redistributional effects. There has been a large increase in the social demand for higher education by women, and they have gained from this expansion while men have lost out. In addition, graduate density is positive for non-graduates, who gain from the reduced rewards accruing to graduates. The results call into question the simple idea of a trend towards a demand for increasing levels of skills and qualifications. More attention should be paid to the distribution of skills and to complex interactions within this. [source] Work Incentives under a New Tax System: The Distribution of Effective Marginal Tax Rates in 2002THE ECONOMIC RECORD, Issue SpecialIssue 2003Gillian Beer Effective marginal tax rates (EMTRs) provide a way of measuring the balance between targeting of welfare payments and the financial incentive to work. High EMTRs result from income tests for welfare payments overlapping with each other and/or the income tax system. Individuals who face high EMTRs over broad ranges of income have little financial incentive to increase their earned income. This paper examines the distribution of EMTRs across the Australian labour force in 2002. It also looks at how the number of people facing high EMTRs has changed since the introduction of the new tax system. [source] Regional unemployment and its persistence in transition countries1THE ECONOMICS OF TRANSITION, Issue 2 2006Fabian Bornhorst transition; regional unemployment; mobility Abstract We look at the differences in regional unemployment rates in six major transition countries and their persistence over time. We analyse the role various adjustment mechanisms play. While movement out of the labour force seems to be one consequence in many regions with high relative unemployment, there are also signs of emerging wage flexibility. Employment creation, by contrast, has not picked up in regions of high unemployment. Labour mobility also remains very limited in size although it appears to respond to basic economic incentives. Policies addressing housing market imperfections and information asymmetries are necessary to increase worker mobility and to integrate better national labour markets. [source] Optimal speed of transition with a shrinking labour force and under uncertainty*THE ECONOMICS OF TRANSITION, Issue 1 2006Randolph Luca Bruno Abstract In the 1990s , during the restructuring of large state enterprises , Central European economies experienced high unemployment. Social policy expenditures, particularly targeted to the non-employed, grew faster than expected due to the need to finance the out-of-the-labour categories. In 1992, after the Passive Labour Market Policies' reforms, the pace of transition decelerated. Unemployment dynamics, speed of transition and non-employment policies are modelled based on the assumption that the labour force is shrinking over time. Dismissed workers have the opportunity to choose an outside-option alternative to labour force participation. Individual uncertainty is assumed in a first phase of transition, while aggregate uncertainty , generating opposition to restructuring , is modelled in a second phase. The model predicts a slowdown in the speed of transition. [source] States, markets, and other unexceptional communities: informal Romanian labour in a Spanish agricultural zoneTHE JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE, Issue 3 2008Tod Hartman The logic of transnational capital and the ongoing European imperative of ,competition' have created unofficial economies, seemingly exceptional situations in which the state is left to grapple with the problem of essential but ,illegal' labour in spaces in which it is no longer unambiguously sovereign. This article discusses Romanian labourers working informally, and often temporarily, in an agricultural area characterized by intensive plastic greenhouse production in Almería province, Spain. Informal employment is arranged through personal contacts and connections, advertisements, or anonymously in the plaza, the public square. Wages are often negotiated through the person of a Romanian intermediary, who organizes workers into teams, contracts with Spanish growers, and retains a significant proportion of the total pay. It is argued here that although technically outside of state jurisdiction, some of this ,illegal' economic activity embodies normalized, unexceptional features of the ,official' labour market. These include the general reliability of obtaining work with predictable wages and some opportunity for occupational and economic mobility within the sector for a limited number of people, as well as work-related hierarchies, a racialized division of the area's labour force, and the reproduction of capitalist relations of production in the interests of prolonging the provision of flexible and cheap migrant labour with the complicity of the state. Résumé La logique du capital transnational et l'impératif européen de « concurrence » ont donné naissance à des économies non officielles, situations apparemment exceptionnelles dans lesquelles l'État doit résoudre le problème d'une main-d',uvre indispensable mais « illégale » dans des espaces où il n'est plus entièrement souverain. L'auteur décrit ici le travail informel et souvent temporaire de Roumains dans une région agricole de la province d'Almería, en Espagne, caractérisée par une production intensive sous serres en plastique. Les embauches informelles s'organisent par contacts personnels et relations, par petites annonces, ou de façon anonyme sur les places de village. Les salaires sont souvent négociés par un intermédiaire roumain qui organise aussi les équipes d'ouvriers, sous-traite avec les cultivateurs espagnols et se réserve une part conséquente de la paie. Bien qu'elle échappe techniquement à la juridiction de l'État, une partie de cette activitééconomique « illégale » reprend des caractéristiques normalisées et ordinaires du marché du travail « officiel » : fiabilité d'un travail rémunéré de façon prévisible, possibilité de mobilité professionnelle et économique dans le secteur pour un nombre limité de personnes, hiérarchisation du travail, division racialisée de la main-d',uvre dans la région, reproduction des relations capitalistes de production en vue de prolonger la fourniture de main-d',uvre migrante flexible et bon marché, avec la complicité des pouvoirs publics. [source] | |||||||||||||||||||