On‐the‐job training: a skill match approach to the determinants of lifelong learning

A recurrent finding in on‐the‐job training research is the ‘training gap’ in formal training: the positive correlation between initial education and continuing training. This finding is here examined from the perspective of two important distinctions: (i) between employee skill supply and job skill demand and (ii) between formal and informal training. Less‐educated workers may hold jobs with low skill requirements demanding little further formal training because the use of high skills is irrelevant, jobs that moreover provide little informal training. Exploring these issues on representative Swedish survey data using the educational mismatch (overqualified, the rightly qualified and the underqualified) model, we find that job requirements are strongly correlated with the incidence of both formal and informal training. Rather than, as has previously been argued, employee training decisions being the cause of the gap, this suggests that employer decisions regarding how to structure jobs and whom to hire are the primary factors behind the training gap.     

Occupational downgrading and bumping down: The combined effects of education and experience

Job competition between workers has important implications for “downgrading” and “bumping down”. To account for these phenomena, a matching model is considered in which highly educated and poorly educated workers compete for skilled jobs. An exogenous increase in the proportion of highly skilled workers increases the proportion of these workers in low-level jobs (downgrading). Another of the paper's findings is that changes in the composition of the workforce affect workers' opportunities to accumulate experience. An increase in the relative supply of highly educated workers reduces the opportunities for poorly educated workers to learn on the job. Both education and experience are required in order to access skilled jobs.     

Performance pay, risk attitudes and job satisfaction

We present a model in which workers with greater ability and greater risk tolerance move into performance pay jobs to capture rents and contrast it with the classic agency model. Estimates from the German Socio-Economic Panel confirm testable implications drawn from our model. First, before controlling for earnings, workers in performance pay jobs have higher job satisfaction, a proxy for on-the-job utility. Second, after controlling for earnings, workers in jobs with performance pay have the same job satisfaction as those not in such jobs. Third, those workers in performance pay jobs who have greater risk tolerance routinely report greater job satisfaction. While these findings support models in which workers capture rent, they would not be suggested by the classic agency model.     

Temporary Help Agencies and Occupational Mobility*

This paper analyses the effects of Temporary Help Agencies (THA) on occupational mobility by performing an empirical comparison of the job‐to‐job upgrading chances of agency and regular (non‐agency) workers in Spain. We estimate a switching regression model to allow for self‐selection into agency work because of, for instance, more motivated workers being more likely to search for jobs through a THA. We find evidence in favour of the existence of self‐selection in all qualification groups considered. Concerning mobility, we find that agency workers in intermediate qualification levels are less likely to experience demotions than regular workers. THA increase the probability of high‐skilled workers achieving a permanent contract in Spain.     

坚持以人为本理念 推进经常性思想教育工作

经常性思想教育是一项针对人的系统工程,其工作必须做到以下方面：突出以人为本,加强理论学习,提高自身素质;抓好细微工作,保证教育经常;做好调查研究,增强实际效果;及时采取措施,注重消除隐患;紧贴工作实际,提高教育质量;善于发现规律,掌握工作方法;为人清正廉洁,突出表率作用。     

Employment protection reforms,employment and the incidence of temporary jobs in Europe: 1996–2001

This paper uses longitudinal data on individuals from the European Community Household Panel over the 1996–2001 period to investigate the impact of reforms of employment protection systems in nine countries on the incidence of employment and of temporary jobs for wage and salary workers. Important features of the research design include the use of individual fixed effects models as well as the inclusion of country-specific trends in the dependent variable. A robust finding is that policies making it easier to create temporary jobs on average raise the likelihood that wage and salary workers will be in temporary jobs. This effect is felt primarily when the regional unemployment rate is relatively high. However, there is no evidence that such reforms raise employment. Thus, these reforms, while touted as a way of jump-starting individuals' careers in the job market, appear rather to encourage a substitution of temporary for permanent work.     

The effect of job satisfaction on job search: Not just whether,but also where

Using survey data of public sector employees in the Netherlands, this paper shows that workers' satisfaction with various job domains not only affects whether but also where workers search for another job. An intuitive pattern emerges. Workers try to leave their current employer when they are uncomfortable with an organisation-specific job domain, like management. Conversely, when workers are dissatisfied with a job domain that differs sufficiently across jobs within an organisation, like autonomy, they look for another position in their current organisation. Dissatisfaction with job domains which may have an industry-specific component, such as job duties, drives workers out of their industry. The findings provide a unique view on the relative heterogeneity of job domains across jobs within organisations and industries.     

The Effectiveness of Local Government Active Labor Programs: The Case of the Benefits-to-Wages Program in Russia

This paper presents the results of an implementation evaluation of a Benefits-to-Wages (BtW) program operated in Perm, Russia. In part because of the low level of support for Active Labor Market Programs (ALPs) by Russian national and regional governments, municipalities have begun implementing ALPs of their own. Participation in the BtW program is limited to an unemployed adult in very low income family where at least one child is present. The program appears to be highly successful, with 74% of applicants finding jobs while still participating in the program. The assessment found that participation in the program, and job acquisition in particular, were important in raising participant families' incomes. Nevertheless, only about 10% of participants with jobs were lifted out of poverty. Receipt of certain social services and Employment Services, including training, had little impact on which participants succeeded in finding a job. Similarly, person attributes, such as education and prior work experience paid no statistically significant role. This pattern is consistent with a situation in which job requirements are modest and are met by most program participants. Various patterns indicate the program did have a positive effect on job acquisition, although the absence of a control group prevents any stronger statement.     

Too many theories,too few facts? What the data tell us about the link between span of control,compensation and career dynamics

In this paper, we use a unique personnel dataset from a large European firm in an high tech manufacturing industry that provides information about hierarchical relationships. This unusually rare feature allows us to identify the chain of command. We provide a few stylized facts about the link between span of control, compensation and career dynamics and relate our findings to the existing theoretical literature of hierarchies in organizations: the assignment model, the incentives model, the information processing model, the supervision model, and the knowledge-based hierarchy model. We observe an increase in the span, an increase in wage inequality between job levels, and the introduction of a new hierarchical level. We also find that higher spans of control are associated with higher wages. The knowledge-based hierarchy provides the most likely explanation for these results when communication costs are decreasing. However, we also find evidence of learning and reallocation of talent within and across job levels, a finding that can not be explained by a static model of knowledge based hierarchy but rather by dynamic models of careers in organizations. Finally, we provide a few suggestions to enrich the existing theoretical literature and reconcile it with the facts.     

Subsidizing low-skilled jobs in a dual labor market

We introduce a matching model that allows for classical and frictional unemployment. The labor market is dual featuring low-skilled and high-skilled workers and simple and complex jobs. Simple jobs pay a minimum wage, while wages in the complex jobs are determined by Nash bargaining. Opportunities for low-skilled workers are limited to simple jobs; while high-skilled unemployed can apply for both types of jobs, and thereby can accept to be downgraded. We analyze the outcomes of simple job subsidy policies assuming that government budget is balanced through taxes on occupied workers. We first give conditions for the existence and uniqueness of a steady-state equilibrium and we then analyze the effects of different fiscal instruments. We show that in this set-up, increasing simple job subsidies does not necessarily reduce low-skilled unemployment or unemployment spells. By introducing heterogeneous skills and possible downgrading of the high-skilled workers, we show that the effectiveness of such policies in reducing the classical unemployment is decreasing. In fact, any additional classical unemployed re-entering the job market is accompanied by an increasing number of high-skilled workers downgrading to low-skilled jobs. We calibrate the model on French labor market data. It is found that for five low-skilled workers leaving classical unemployment, two high-skilled workers are downgraded.     

Algorithms as work designers: How algorithmic management influences the design of jobs

We review the literature on algorithmic management (AM) to bridge the gap between this emerging research area and the well-established theory and research on work design. First, we identify six management functions that algorithms are currently able to perform: monitoring, goal setting, performance management, scheduling, compensation, and job termination. Second, we show how each AM function affects key job resources (e.g., job autonomy, job complexity) and key job demands (e.g., workload, physical demands); with each of these resources and demands being important drivers of worker motivation and their well-being. Third, rejecting a deterministic perspective and drawing on sociotechnical systems theory, we outline key categories of variables that moderate the link between AM on work design, namely transparency, fairness and human influence (e.g., whether workers can control the system). We summarize our review in the form of a model to help guide research on AM, and to support practitioners and designers in the creation and maintenance of meaningful jobs in the era of algorithms.     

Wages,non-wage characteristics,and predominantly male jobs

This paper estimates the wage premium associated with working in predominantly male jobs. It also examines whether this wage premium is greater than the compensation workers demand for the less desirable non-wage characteristics of such jobs. The coefficients of the change in the proportion of men in an occupation on the change in wages for quits and layoffs provide opposing biased estimates of the wage premium; because workers who voluntarily quit move to better matches, but those that are laid off accept jobs from the representative distribution of job offers. Specifically, when the premium paid over- (under-)compensates for undesirable work characteristics, the quit estimate is a downward (upward) biased estimate of the wage premium, while the layoff estimate is biased upward (downward). Results from the U.S. National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) and the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) indicate that: (1) the estimated bounds of the wage premium are large; and (2) the wage premium overcompensates for the non-wage characteristics of male jobs.     

Fits,misfits and interactions: learning at work,job satisfaction and job‐related well‐being

The resource‐based view (RBV) of the firm has focused attention on the importance of aligning employees' needs with the requirements of the jobs they do. This article focuses on how these needs and requirements interact in terms of learning. It does so in two ways. First, it develops new survey instruments to capture the learning demands of jobs and the learning dispositions of workers and uses them for the first time in a survey of 2,810 employees. Second, it examines how these person and job characteristics correlate with specific aspects of job satisfaction and job‐related well‐being. The results show that although learning alignment is associated with high levels of satisfaction and well‐being, not all learning misalignments are associated with the reverse.     

Matching,Reallocation and Changes in Earnings Dispersion*

The ‘fractal’ nature of the rise in earnings dispersion is one of its key features. In this paper, we offer a new perspective on the causes of changes in earnings dispersion, focusing on the role of labour reallocation. We set out a framework showing that job and worker reallocation affects earnings dispersion. We quantify this using a data set comprising almost the universe of workers and employers in Maryland. The changing allocation of workers to jobs played a significant role in explaining movements in the dispersion of earnings.     

Preferences,Comparative Advantage,and Compensating Wage Differentials for Job Routinization*

I attempt to explain why there is not much evidence on compensating wage differentials for job disamenities. I focus on the match between workers’ preferences for routine jobs and the variability in tasks associated with the job. Using data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, I find that mismatched workers earn lower wages and that both male and female workers in routinized jobs earn, on average, 5.5% and 7% less than their counterparts in non‐routinized jobs. However, once preferences and mismatch are accounted for, this difference decreases to 2% for men, and 4% for women, not statistically significant in both cases.     

Spatial versus social mismatch

The aim of this paper is to provide a new mechanism based on social interactions, explaining why distance to jobs can have a negative impact on workers’ labor-market outcomes, especially ethnic minorities. Building on Granovetter’s idea that weak ties are superior to strong ties for providing support in getting a job, we develop a model in which workers who live far away from jobs choose to have less connections to weak ties. Because of the lack of good public transportation in the US, it is costly (both in terms of time and money) to commute to business centers to meet other types of people who can provide other source of information about jobs. If distant minority workers mainly rely on their strong ties, who are more likely to be unemployed, there is then little chance for them of escaping unemployment. It is therefore the separation in both the social and physical space that prevents ethnic minorities from finding a job.     

Testing the intertemporal labor supply model: are jobs important?

The neoclassical life-cycle labor supply model assumes that hours of work are determined by labor supply choices alone and does not include a role for employers or job distinctions. An alternative model in which employers have an interest in employee hours and changing jobs is costly may reconcile weak and conflicting evidence regarding the neoclassical model. An important implication of such an alternative is that individuals may face hours constraints on a job and thus can choose hours freely only between jobs. This paper tests several implications of the neoclassical model against this alternative model of hours determination. Using a unique panel of individuals and jobs constructed using data on women from the 1988–1992 Panel Study of Income Dynamics, I compare hours variances and labor supply elasticities measured within and between jobs. Results provide some evidence against the neoclassical model and suggest that ignoring the role of employers in determining hours of work can lead to downward bias in estimates of labor supply elasticities.     

Predicting job satisfaction and workers’ intentions to leave at the bottom of the high value agricultural chain: evidence from the Ethiopian cut flower industry

While there is a large body of research focusing on working conditions in labour-intensive industries, none has yet considered how workers themselves perceive their own working conditions. This paper draws on a sample of workers from the cut flower sector industry in Ethiopia to examine the extent to which workers are satisfied with their jobs and to explore the relationship between job satisfaction and intention to leave. Results suggest that a positive evaluation of extrinsic organizational rewards (wage, job security and healthy environment) contributes to workers’ job satisfaction. Dissatisfied workers report higher intentions to leave their job in the flower farms. In addition to low levels of job satisfaction, having alternative livelihood strategies is a key determining factor in the intention to leave. Interestingly, being a member of an informal savings net organized at the work floor mitigates the intention to leave. The paper ends with some implications for managers and policy-makers, along with limitations and suggestions for future research.     

Marketplace matching in Britain: Evidence from individual unemployment spells

This paper investigates job matching patterns in Great Britain. Evidence from individual transitions out of unemployment demonstrates that recently unemployed workers are likely to find jobs in the existing stock of vacancies. If, however, they are unlucky and fail to match early on, job seekers cease matching with existing vacancies. Workers with longer unemployment spells instead form matches with the flow of new vacancies. This pattern is more pronounced for workers who experienced only short spells of employment prior to their current job search. This evidence provides robust support for stock-flow matching but is difficult to reconcile with random matching.