Making the risk of job loss a way of life: Does it affect job satisfaction?

This study investigates the relationship between job satisfaction and job security in European countries. In doing so, it attempts to take into account the endogenous nature of the job security–job satisfaction relationship after controlling for the various economic and personal characteristics. The results show that workers in jobs with low likelihood of job termination derive higher utility from work compared to the workers in insecure jobs. This holds even after controlling for endogeneity by using both a conventional IV approach and a selection model. This appears to be the case for both men and women.     

Do women prefer women's work?

A new methodology is implemented to determine whether job characteristics can explain why women are concentrated in low-paying, female-dominated occupations. Extensive information on jobs and labour market histories are collected from the 1982 National Longitudinal Survey, Youth Cohort, for women and men characterized by substantial labour market attachment. Significant differences in nonpecuniary job characteristics between the male and female samples are found to exist. Nevertheless, we find no evidence that women differentially favour those job characteristics commonly associated with ‘women's work’.     

Balance of payments,the Harrod foreign trade multiplier and economic growth: the European and North American experience, 1970–85

This paper examines the assoication between Canadian unions and their member' attitudes. Data on job satisfaction indicate that unionized workers in Canada are less happy with the quality of their jobs than non-union workers. The former, however, are more satisfied with their financial compensation and job security than non-members.     

An Analysis of the Impact of Health on Occupation

Maintaining individuals with health limitations in the labour force is a challenge of growing importance. Determining the effect of health on occupation may tell us how people adapt to their limitations, and what types of jobs make this harder or easier. This paper uses the first 14 waves of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey to examine the effect of health and changes in health on occupation for the working‐age population. I use dynamic panel models which account for selection into employment. Two measures of occupation are used to capture two aspects of occupation highlighted in the literature as being linked to health: physical job demands and status. The results of the analyses provide some evidence that a health shock reduces the likelihood of manual employment for younger men, suggesting that younger men may adapt to a health shock by reducing physical job demands. Worsening health and work‐limiting long‐term conditions are found to have a negative effect on occupational status for men and women, suggesting health selection into lower‐status jobs, and an adverse effect of poor health on occupational mobility.     

On the distribution of job characteristics: an analysis of the DOT data

We analyse the information in the Dictionary of Occupational Titles to characterize the structure of labour demand. Two dimensions, an intellectual factor and a dexterity factor, capture two-thirds of the variance in job requirements; the remaining (co-)variance cannot be easily structured. Simple linear relationships go a long way in describing the matching between job activities and required worker qualities (Intellect for complex relations to Data and to People, Dexterity for complex relations to Things). There is no dichotomy between mathematical and verbal required skills. Poor working conditions are not restricted to workers in low-level jobs; we find strong support for compensating wage differentials. At more intellectual jobs, men receive less wage compensation for working conditions, while in jobs requiring greater dexterity they receive more. Such a relationship is absent for women.     

Non-pecuniary Advantages Versus Pecuniary Disadvantages; Job Satisfaction Among Male And Female Academics In Scottish Universities

This paper considers job satisfaction in the academic labour market drawing upon a particularly detailed data set of 900 academics from five traditional Scottish Universities. Recent studies have revealed that in the labour force as a whole women generally express themselves as more satisfied with their jobs than men. Our results show that reports of overall job satisfaction do not vary widely by gender. This result is explained through the nature of our dataset, limited as it is to a highly educated workforce, in which female workers are likely to have job expectations comparable to their male counterparts. Ordered probit analysis is used to analyse the determinants of an academic's overall satisfaction at work as well as satisfaction with promotion prospects, job security and salary. Comparison salary is found to be an important influence on academics' overall job satisfaction although evidence suggests that academics place a lower emphasis on pecuniary relative to non pecuniary aspects of work than other sectors of the workforce.     

You can’t always get what you want: gender differences in job satisfaction of university graduates

Previous literature stressed on the gender differences in job satisfaction and the factors influencing the job satisfaction of men and women. Two rationales are usually provided for the finding that women tend to be relatively more satisfied with their jobs than men although disadvantaged in labour markets: first, women may have relatively lower expectations of career and income, and second, they may attach relatively less importance to extrinsic rewards than men. In order to analyse whether substantial gender differences exist already at the beginning of the career, we employ information of over 20 000 graduates collected through a large-scale survey of German university graduates who recently entered the labour market. We find that the job satisfaction of female graduates is on average slightly lower than the job satisfaction of male graduates, but our results do not point to substantial gender differences. In our sample of highly qualified individuals, men and women are very similar in what they want from their jobs and also in their perceptions of what they get. While our results point to substantial similarity of men and women in the early career stage, gender differences may emerge at later stages of the career life cycle.     

Do Migrants Get Good Jobs? New Migrant Settlement in Australia*

The paper uses two cohorts of the longitudinal survey of immigrants to Australia data to study how changes in social security legislation in 1997 affected the quality of jobs held by new migrants. We use bivariate probit models to estimate the probabilities of holding a ‘good job’ in terms of the usual human capital and demographic variables (including visa category). Our results suggest that the policy change had a positive impact on the probability to find a job, but a negative impact to hold a good job.     

Gender differences in Russia's job mobility and its rewards*

This article considers age and gender differences in the probability and consequences of job mobility in Russia. Little is known about who is mobile and whether mobility impacts wages once the characteristics of movers are controlled for. Results show a gender difference in the likelihood of exit but not promotion. Results also show that promotions have a positive effect only on the wages of young women, but young men's wages are not affected. Further, young men see a significant decrease in wages following an exit, while young women are not affected by firm exit. The article shows that early mobility is particularly important for women, who earn less overall. Results help to understand processes of inequality in wages and conditions that occur due to sorting, and the importance of promotions as ‘life chances’ which lead to ‘career-track jobs’. Gender differences in securing such life chances may help to understand gaps in earnings, which emerge later.     

A better job thanks to personal networks? An evaluation for migrants who arrived in France before age 18

It is more difficult for migrants than natives to find a job in their host country, so many of them have to accept, at least temporarily, a job that is below their level of qualification. This represents a waste of human capital for society and can undermine social cohesion. Relying on social relationships might help them to bypass some of the obstacles that prevent them from finding a job that matches their skillset. We focus on migrants who arrived in France before the age of 18 years, who were educated entirely or partially in France. We use the rich French Trajectories and Origins dataset for 2009 to study the impact of personal contacts on the quality of the current employment. We measure the job quality using an indicator based on the educational requirement for a given occupation. To address the endogeneity between our dependent variable (holding a suitable job or not) and the variable of interest (employment found through a personal contact or not), we use the variable ‘sibling(s) in France’ as an instrument: this variable influences an individual’s probability of finding a job through contacts but does not influence directly the quality of the employment. Our results indicate that for these migrants, finding a job through personal contacts strongly and positively impacts the occupational status attained: it raises both women’s and men’s probability of holding a suitable job by more than 0.40 points.     

Happily Ever After? A Study of Job Satisfaction in Australia

The present paper investigates issues of job satisfaction and gender. In particular, the finding that women are significantly happier in work than their male counterparts is examined. To shed light on this issue, smaller subgroups of the total sample are analysed and more subjective variables (in addition to more traditional objective variables) are incorporated. It is found that differences in reported job satisfaction are more pronounced when looking at individuals with lower levels of education in lower skilled jobs. The determinants of job satisfaction for men and women in this group are significantly different; this was not found to be the case when looking at higher skilled, higher educated individuals. Women in this latter group exhibit similar (i.e. lower) levels of satisfaction to their male counterparts. It is conjectured that this result is due to differences in expectations of work among men and women and also among women themselves.     

The timing of childbearing: The role of human capital and personal preferences

As significant as the shift from quantity to quality in fertility decisions, a rise in the median age at first birth has been commonly observed in the more developed world. This paper attempts to understand the latter demographic trend from the empirical perspective. We first construct a conditional hazard model that incorporates determinants of birth spacing, with a primary emphasis on human capital and personal preference factors. We then examine the importance of these factors, using a rich data set comprised of a selected sample of women from various cohorts reported in the 1980 Taiwan Census. Our results show that, in addition to the age at marriage, human capital factors such as the woman’s education, job security and occupation are all significant in influencing the first spacing. The roles played by these human capital factors become even more important for the second spacing. In the third spacing, the relative importance of education and occupation still persists, while gender preferences become much stronger. Overall, while job security shortens the timing of childbearing, better education and occupation as well as more girls from previous births all lead to delays in births. As for preference factors, we find that elementary school teachers have a shorter birth-spacing compared to junior high school teachers, indicating possible personal preferences for children that are consistent with women’s job selection.     

Multiple job holding in the United Kingdom: evidence from the British Household Panel Survey

This article examines the determinants of multiple job holding in the UK. We address these issues using data from the first 11 waves of the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), which covered the period from 1991 to 2001. Evidence from the BHPS does not support the hypotheses of main job hours constrained and main job insecurity. We argue that the incentive for moonlighting in the UK is due to financial pressures and the desire for heterogeneous jobs. The empirical work is carried out separately for men and women.     

“Opt out” or kept out? The effect of stigma,structure, selection,and sector on the labor force participation of married women in India

Using the 61st and 68th rounds of National Sample Survey data, we investigate the role of stigma, the economy’s structure, potential selection bias, and sectoral differences in explaining the low labor force participation (LFP) of middle and secondary educated women in India relative to low‐ and high‐educated women (the “U‐shape”). Estimating LFP regressions on a sample of prime‐aged married women, we show that, controlling for background characteristics, if a woman’s husband works in a white‐collar job in a region with a high share of blue‐collar jobs, she is less likely to participate in the labor market (stigma). We also find a positive effect of an increase in an index of white‐collar job growth (structure) on married women’s LFP. These effects are present in both rural and urban sectors but are strongest in the rural sector. However, middle and secondary educated women are still found to have substantially lower LFP than low‐ and graduate‐educated women in both sectors. Indeed, over time, the U‐shape persists in the rural sector and deepens in the urban sector. Because unobservables are quite large in the urban sector, we use the method of instrumental variables and find an increasing return at middle levels but stagnation at higher levels.     

The Sri Lankan Unemployment Problem Revisited

High unemployment in Sri Lanka has been attributed to unrealistic expectations, to queuing for public sector jobs, and to stringent job security regulations. However, the empirical evidence supporting these explanations is weak. This paper analyzes individual records from the 1995 Labor Force Survey, and time series for wages in the formal and informal sectors of the economy. The paper rejects the unrealistic‐expectations hypothesis by comparing the impact of education on the actual wages of those who have a job and on the lowest acceptable wages of the unemployed. But it finds substantial rents associated with jobs in the public sector, and in activities protected by high tariffs or covered by job security regulations. A time‐series analysis of the impact of unemployment on wage increases across sectors suggests that many among the unemployed are waiting for “good” job openings, but are not interested in readily available “bad” jobs.     

Women's unemployment during transition Evidence from Czech and Slovak micro-data

We analyse women’s weekly probabilities of leaving unemployment in the Czech and Slovak Republics (CR and SR) in order to investigate three questions: 1) Why are unemployment rates much lower in the CR than the SR?; 2) Does the unemployment compensation scheme (UCS) substantially lengthen unemploy-mentspells?; and 3) Why are women’s unemployment rates higher than men’s? We find that differences in the behaviour of the individuals, employers and institutions in the SR and CR (as measured by differences in coefficients) play a larger role in determining the CR’s shorter female unemployment spells than do differences in measured demand and demographic variables. The UCS has only a moderate effect on duration and its impact is greater in the CR. The differences between men’s and women’s spells (in each republic) are explained more by differences in coefficients than by differences in observed characteristics. JEL classification: C41, H53, J23, J64, O15, P2.     

An analysis of the determinants of job satisfaction when individuals’ baseline satisfaction levels may differ

A growing literature seeks to explain differences in individuals’ self-reported satisfaction with their jobs. The evidence so far has mainly been based on cross-sectional data and when panel data have been used, individual unobserved heterogeneity has been modelled as an ordered probit model with random effects. This article makes use of longitudinal data for Denmark, taken from the waves 1995–1999 of the European Community Household Panel, and estimates fixed effects ordered logit models using the estimation methods proposed by Ferrer-i-Carbonel and Frijters (2004) and Das and van Soest (1999). For comparison and testing purposes a random effects ordered probit is also estimated. Estimations are carried out separately on the samples of men and women for individuals’ overall satisfaction with the jobs they hold. We find that using the fixed effects approach (that clearly rejects the random effects specification), considerably reduces the number of key explanatory variables. The impact of central economic factors is the same as in previous studies, though. Moreover, the determinants of job satisfaction differ considerably between the genders, in particular once individual fixed effects are allowed for.     

NEGLECTED WOMEN AND OTHER IMPLICATIONS OF COMPARABLE WORTH

Comparable worth proposals presume that the gender wage gap is a result of occupational segregation. The proposals argue that females are channeled into "women's jobs" and that overcrowding depresses women's wages below the "value" of the work performed. Comparable worth legislation proposes replacing the idea of equal pay for equal work with a principle of equal pay for different work of comparable worth determined by job evaluations. Such job evaluations are feasible only for the public sector and large private employers. The analysis in this paper recognizes that comparable worth wage adjustments are to be limited to the large employers. It examines how employers in the covered sector tend to alter their pay packages and hiring standards. Comparable worth legislation also affects wages in the uncovered sector populated by small employers. The rationing of women's jobs and the changes in hiring standards for men's jobs in the covered sector tend to redound to the benefit of smart, energetic women and dull, indolent men.     

Are nurses less satisfied than other workers?

Are nurses less satisfied than other workers? In this study comparing job satisfaction of baccalaureate nurses with elementary teachers and accountants, the three groups rated many aspects of their jobs similarly. Nurses were not comparatively or pervasively less satisfied with their jobs than these other professionals except in the areas of salary, chance for administrative participation, and job security.     

The impact of job mobility on earnings: using occupational and industrial classifications to identify job changes

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median number of years that a US worker has been with their current employer is 4.4 years. Although many job changes may not be classified as ‘career changes,’ any type of job change may have an impact on a person’s future earnings. In the present study, the following three types of job changes are examined in order to determine which ones result in higher incomes: a change in occupational status; a change in industry; or a change in both. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), a log-linear wage regression with a correction for self-selection is estimated. Results suggest that changing jobs within the same industry or within the same occupation both increase a person’s income. However, a job change that is characterized by both a change in industry and occupation reduces a person’s income. The present study is one of the few studies to examine the effects of job mobility on earnings when mobility is defined in the context of changes in occupational and/or industrial classification.