Getting a Good Job: Mobility in a Segmented Labor Market

This study examines the process by which men in three ethnic neighborhoods of Boston move from secondary to primary employment in a segmented labor market. Workers who successfully make this transition belong to neighborhood-based social groups that have customary linkages to particular primary jobs. Members of such groups costlessly learn how to perceive and act in the labor market in ways that faciliate their entry into the primary sector. Workers' labor market perceptions reflect objective characteristics of the primary jobs to which their social groups are linked.     

Zero Hours Contracts and Their Growth

This article studies the prevalence and nature of zero hours contracts (ZHCs) in the UK labour market. It is widely argued that the headline count of ZHC workers based on the Labour Force Survey historically underestimated the number of workers in ZHC jobs. Here, we argue that this likely continues to be the case, particularly if one considers other, similar, no-guaranteed-hours jobs alongside ZHCs. ZHC jobs and workers are heterogeneous, but ZHCs have become increasingly concentrated among young workers, full-time students, migrants, black and minority ethnic workers, in personal service and elementary occupations, and in the distribution, accommodation and restaurant sector over time. Compared to other forms of employment, median wages in ZHC jobs have also fallen. The most common prior labour market state for ZHC workers is non-ZHC employment, particularly part-time employment, with part of the reported growth in ZHCs driven by reclassification of existing employment relationships. Finally, we show that growth in public awareness of ZHCs contributed substantially to recent growth in reported ZHCs, particularly over the period 2013/14.     

The Changing Spatial Relationship Between Residences and Worksites in the New York Metropolitan Region: Implications for Public Policy

In recent decades, most new metropolitan population and job growth has occurred in the suburbs. Conventional wisdom suggests that because of the selective nature of suburban labor market development, most metropolitan workers currently live further from their jobs. Distance, in turn, fragments urban labor markets and creates physical and informational barriers to employment.
This article examines the selective pattern of central city-suburban labor market development within the New York Metropolitan Region between 1960 and 1975 and analyzes the extent to which worker residences have adapted to spatial shifts in employment.     

Transitions Out of Casual Employment: The Australian Experience

This paper uses longitudinal data to examine the extent to which casual employees, who account for almost 25 percent of all Australian employees, are able to access non‐casual jobs in the future, and to contrast their experiences with that of other labor market participants. A dynamic mixed multinomial logit model of labor market states is estimated which reveals high rates of mobility from casual employment into non‐casual employment. Among men, casual employees are found to be far more likely to make the transition into non‐casual employment than otherwise comparable unemployed job seekers. For women, however, this is not the case.     

Unions and Flexible Employment in Britain and Spain: A Descriptive Note

Spain and Britain are known to have different labor market structures and degrees of employment protection. Despite such differences, they show remarkably similar associations of unionization with temporary employment and nonstandard hours of work. In particular, we find that unionization in both countries is correlated neither with overtime/long hours of work nor temporary employment. In both economies, instead, part-time work is negatively associated with unionization. These cross-national similarities warrant a rethinking of the strategies of enlargement toward flexible forms of work that unions have supposedly adopted in recent years.     

Pull and push: individual farming in Hungary

This paper is motivated by the fact that (part-time) individual farming is commonly observed among rural households in a number of transition economies but it is not clear prima facie if such resource allocation is optimal. A conceptual model of household labor allocation between individual farming and off-farm wage employment is developed. The model explicitly accounts for the role of household endowments in labor allocation as the analysis is conditioned on the status of factor markets. The hypotheses are empirically tested using 1998 data from a country-representative survey of rural households in Hungary, an advanced transition country, which only recently became EU member state. Results provide evidence that capital market imperfections still remain. Implications for the policies related to agricultural sector restructuring, employment and rural development are discussed.     

Older Married Workers and Nonstandard Jobs: The Effects of Health and Health Insurance

We examine the effects of health and health insurance coverage on older married workers' decisions to work in temporary, contract, part-time, self-employment, and regular full-time jobs. We model the behavior of older married workers as interdependent, showing that one spouse's health and insurance status affects the employment of the other. In general, we find that men and women are less likely to be employed in regular full-time jobs when they are in fair or poor health and are more likely to be in regular full-time employment when their spouses are in poor health.     

Training and Labour Market Flexibility: Is There a Trade-off?

This paper explores the nexus between work-related training and labour market 'flexibility' (which we proxy by contract type, part-time employment and lack of union coverage), using the first five waves of the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) conducted over the period 1991–5. Our results show that workers on short-term employment contracts, who are working part-time or are not covered by a union collective agreement, are significantly less likely to be involved in any work-related training to improve or increase their skills. These findings suggest that there is a trade-off between expanding the more marginal forms of employment and expanding the proportion of the work-force getting work-related training.     

Does the digital economy generate a gender dividend for female employment? Evidence from China

Using data from the China General Social Survey, the China Family Panel Studies, and a unique dataset of enterprises' online recruitment, this research examines the effect of the digital economy on female employment. The empirical results suggest that the digital economy significantly promotes female employment. Consistent with our theoretical analysis, the estimates indicate that this relationship holds because the digital economy promotes the formation of egalitarian gender perspectives, promotes the use of digital technology, and increases labor demand emphasizing the necessity for female-preference occupations. The dividend of the digital economy is tilted toward vulnerable groups in the labor market, including the low-skilled, older, and rural workforce, and only exerts an employment promotion effect on women without parenting burden. Further examination reveals evidence that digitalization has not led to a holistic improvement in the quality of female employment. Digitalization lengthens the working hours of severely underemployed female workers, and improves women's occupational status and job satisfaction; however, it has a minimal impact on protecting employees' rights and interests or reducing overtime workers' work intensity. Nonself-employed, full-time, and part-time workers all benefit from the development of the digital economy, while self-employed workers do not. In addition, a weakening effect of digitalization on the gender employment gap is not evident, which relates to the digital economy generating a female dividend in terms of promoting gender equality and increasing labor demand but resulting in a digital gender divide in the use of digital technology.     

人工智能技术会诱致劳动收入不平等吗——模型推演与分类评估

学术界近期开始关注人工智能技术对收入不平等的影响,但其收入分配效应的形成机理研究尚处于初始阶段,而且定量评估明显不足,尤其缺乏来自发展中国家的经验证据。本文基于Acemoglu and Restrepo(2018a)的人工智能技术模型,引入高技术与低技术两部门分类,推演人工智能技术的收入分配效应,结合中国2001—2016年全国及省级层面数据,分类测算其劳动收入分配的岗位更迭效应和生产率效应。结果发现:①人工智能技术在引发劳动岗位更迭的同时,非对称地改变不同技术部门生产率影响劳动收入分配,诱致高、低技术部门劳动收入差距年均扩大0.75%。②人工智能技术的岗位更迭效应倾向于在低技术部门通过自动化扩张、在高技术部门以新岗位创造方式,加剧收入不平等,而生产率效应存在门槛特征。③人工智能技术在资本和非技术密集型地区的收入分配效应更为突出,且对劳动和技术密集型地区的影响不断增大。为应对人工智能技术对劳动力市场就业结构和收入不平等的冲击,政府应健全就业培训和失业保障制度,制定差异化的区域政策,积极引导人工智能技术朝人机协作和收入平等方向发展。     

Non‐Standard “Contingent” Employment and Job Satisfaction: A Panel Data Analysis

Contingent forms of employment are usually associated with low‐quality jobs and, by inference, jobs that workers find relatively unsatisfying. This assumption is tested using data from a representative household panel survey covering a country (Australia) with a high incidence of nonstandard employment. Results from the estimation of ordered logit regression models reveal that among males, both casual employees and labor‐hire (agency) workers (but not fixed‐term contract workers) report noticeably lower levels of job satisfaction, though this association diminishes with job tenure. Negative effects for women are mainly restricted to labor‐hire workers.     

U.S. Multinational Activity Abroad and U.S. Jobs: Substitutes or Complements?

Critics of globalization claim that firms are being driven by the prospects of cheaper labor and lower labor standards to shift employment abroad. Yet the evidence, beyond anecdotes, is slim. This paper reports stylized facts on the activities of U.S. multinationals at home and abroad for the years 1977 to 1999. We focus on firms in manufacturing and services, two sectors that have received extensive media attention for supposedly exporting jobs. Using firm‐level data collected by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) in Washington, D.C., we report correlations between U.S. multinational employment at home and abroad. Preliminary evidence based on the operations of these multinationals suggests that the sign of the correlation depends on the crucial distinction between affiliates in high‐income and low‐income countries. For affiliates in high‐income countries there is a positive correlation between jobs at home and abroad, suggesting that foreign employment of U.S. multinationals is complementary to domestic employment. For firms that operate in developing countries, employment has been cut in the United States, and affiliate employment has increased. To account for firm size, substitution across firms and entry and exit, we aggregate our data to the industry level. This exercise reveals that the observed “complementarity” between U.S. and foreign jobs has been driven largely by a contraction across all manufacturing sectors. It also reveals that foreign employment in developing countries has substituted for U.S. employment in several highly visible industries, including computers, electronics, and transportation. The fact that there were U.S. jobs lost to foreign affiliates in key sectors, despite broad complementarity in hiring and firing decisions between U.S. parents and their affiliates, helps explain why economists view the impact of globalization on U.S. jobs as benign despite negative news coverage for declining industries.     

Workers' Views of the Impact of Trade on Jobs

This article uses new data to examine how workers' perceptions of the impact of trade on jobs like theirs are related to economic variables representing their career paths, job characteristics, and local labor market conditions. We find that only 17 percent of workers think trade creates jobs. And even fewer workers (4–7 percent) in any industry think trade has created better jobs. We find that workers' perceptions do not reflect their job characteristics or the movability of their jobs. Their perceptions of trade primarily reflect local labor market conditions (hiring and separation rates) and education. The determinants of workers' perceptions of trade present a different pattern compared with their perceptions of job security.     

The Incompatibility of Decentralized Bargaining and Equal Employment Opportunity in Australia

Profound changes have occurred in the industrial relations system in Australia since the mid-1980s as the system of centralized regulation has been replaced by collective bargaining at the level of the enterprise. This has corresponded with the considerable expansion of women's employment, mainly in part-time and temporary jobs. At the same time, recognition of the disadvantaged position of women in the work-force has resulted in the enactment of laws to promote equal employment opportunity. This article examines the ability of these laws to achieve equal employment opportunity policies alongside bargaining decentralization and a growing non-standard women's work-force.     

劳动力市场发展模式的国际比较

失业是全球关注的热点问题。为完善我国劳动力市场,促进就业,文章采用比较分析方法,汲取国外劳动力市场发展精髓,并与我国实际相结合,提出促进就业的路径选择,为就业政策的制定提供了理论依据。     

PROTECTIVE LEGISLATION AND PART-TIME EMPLOYMENT IN BRITAIN

This paper analyses the likely impact of a proposed European Community Directive on part-time work, on part-time employment in Britain. The provisions of the Directive, which extends to part-time employees a number of legal rights currently only available to full-time employees, are contrasted with the complex and somewhat arbitrary present state of the law in Britain in the area of regulating part-time work. The impact is examined by testing models which identify the determinants of the supply and demand for part-time employees. The tests suggest that existing regulations have indeed affected the manner in which part-time employees are utilised but that there is no evidence that the present partial protective legislation has reduced the level of part-time employment. Government opposition to the Directive on such grounds may therefore be unfounded.     

农村劳动力市场发育对农村土地流转的影响分析——基于农户调查的实证研究

利用农户调查数据,运用多元回归模型实证分析了农村劳动力市场发育对农地流转的影响。模型估算结果表明：在表征农村劳动力市场发育程度的四个变量中,工资自主决定程度对农地转出率影响最大,回归系数达到了0.528,即该变量每增加一个单位将会使农地转出率增长52.8%。就业流动自由度对农地转出率的影响也比较大,回归系数为0.423。就业市场服务体系完善程度对农地转出率的影响相对较小,回归系数为0.126。在此基础上,得出相应的政策启示。     

国有企业就业弱势群体形成原因与治理对策研究——国有企业内部劳动市场的缺陷及其修复

本文通过分析传统体制下国有企业内部劳动力市场运行的低效率对下岗失业人员增多的影响，阐述了在经济转轨过程中国有企业内部劳动力市场的缺陷及其修复机制。文章认为，国有企业所依托的内部劳动力市场上的工资决定和就业政策的制度性特征，是造成目前国有企业就业弱势群体就业困难的内在原因，并提出了牺牲效率为代价而过多地使用被动的失业政策无助于从根本上解决问题。为此，应从修复内部劳动力市场运行机制入手，打通内外部劳动力市场，配套使用主动和被动的失业政策，才是减少国有企业就业弱势群体的根本途径。     

The Effects of a Job‐Creation Scheme: Evidence from Regional Variation in Program Capacities

In direct job‐creation schemes, unemployed individuals at risk of permanent labor market exclusion are offered temporary subsidized employment in public‐ or nonprofit‐sector firms in combination with skills training and sociopedagogical support. The main aim is to stabilize and qualify them for later re‐integration into the regular labor market. Exploiting exogenous regional variation in population‐group–specific program capacities, I find that, on average, such a program eases the transition out of unemployment but has no long‐term effect on regular employment.     

Hierarchical Careers

A model of hierarchical careers that integrates the career concerns of workers and the production concerns of firms is presented. The model generates standard supply side age earnings profiles. It also explains intermittent career events such as promotions, quits, layoffs, lateral mobility, and early retirement. The model is also able to explain several labor market institutions such as fast track jobs, up or out rules, internal labor markets, primary and secondary jobs, and insider/outsider labor markets.