Multiple Job Holding,Skill Diversification,and Mobility

In this article, we investigate the interrelated dynamics of dual jobholding, human capital, occupational choice, and mobility, using a panel sample (1991–2005) of UK employees from the British Household Panel Survey. The evidence suggests that individuals may be using multiple jobholding as a conduit for obtaining new skills and expertise and as a stepping‐stone to new careers, also involving self‐employment. Individuals doing a different secondary job than their primary occupation are more likely to switch to a new primary job in the next year, and a job that is different than their current primary employment. The results show that there are human capital spillover effects between primary and secondary employment.     

Career Employment and Job Stopping

Career jobs typically end well before retirement and are followed by a period of postcareer employment. Although the most financially successful transitions occur when new positions are obtained in the same industry and occupation as the career job, mobility usually involves a change in industry andlor in occupation. Pension-covered career jobs last longer and more frequently end in retirement than noncovered positions. Pensions may also reduce the probability that retirements occur at very young ages and delay retirements when coverage is first obtained in postcareer employment.     

Job Mobility in Europe,Japan and the United States

Evidence about job mobility outside the United States is scarce and difficult to compare cross‐nationally because of non‐uniform data. We document job mobility patterns of college graduates in their first three years in the labour market, using unique uniform data covering 11 European countries and Japan. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we replicate the information in this survey to compare the results with the United States. We find that (a) US graduates hold more jobs than European graduates, (b) contrasting conventional wisdom, job mobility in Japan is only somewhat lower than the European average, and (c) there are large differences in job mobility within Europe.     

A Note on Job Mobility Among Workers with Disabilities

This article uses data from the 1990 and 1993 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation to analyze relationships between disability status and job mobility. We identify individuals who experienced voluntary or involuntary job separations over a 20-month period and examine the effect of disability status on rates of job change and wage growth following a job change. The results show that disabled workers are more likely to experience involuntary job changes than are nondisabled workers, but there is little difference in the wage effects of job changes by disability status.     

Union Influence on Local Union Leaders' Perceptions of Job Insecurity: An Empirical Test

Although recent studies have demonstrated that union workers value job security, little research exists about what causes these perceptions and how unions might affect them. In this study, a job insecurity measure is developed and analysed using a sample of union members. The results indicate that the relationships between union variables and individual perceptions of insecurity depend on the organizational level at which threats occur (e.g. arbitrary supervision or organizational decline). Furthermore, for higher source-level threats, union members are often sensitive to the wage-employment trade-off in that, if they perceive their union to effectively raise wages, they have higher levels of job insecurity. However, work rules do not appear to have much effect on reducing job insecurity perceptions.     

Exit,Voice and Loyalty Reactions to Job Insecurity in Sweden: Do Unionized and Non‐unionized Employees Differ?

Although job insecurity has received growing recognition in connection with the transformation of working life, little is known about how unionization affects its consequences. Data from Swedish health care employees indicate that job insecurity is related primarily to coping strategies in the exit and voice domains. Union members were less inclined to make use of the exit and voice options compared with their non‐unionized co‐workers, and more typically expressed loyalty to the organization. The collective support derived from union membership may make individual voice expressions less important, a finding that has to be replicated in countries with lower unionization rates.     

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.     

Insecurity,food financing and the IMF

This article considers the desirability and feasibility of an international food financing facility along the lines of existing lending facilities administered by the IMF and under the IMF's auspices. A prominent proposal is the extention of The Compensatory Financing Facility. The authors examine this proposal in the context of the nature and magnitude of food insecurity in developing countries. The authors conclude that the establishment of a food facility within the IMF is both desirable and feasible, but that, as suggested by FAO, it should be separate from The Compensatory Financing Facility.     

Union Co‐operation in a Context of Job Insecurity: Negotiated Outcomes from Teamworking

This paper explores the ‘mutual gains’ argument that employees benefit when teamworking is introduced alongside employee involvement in problem‐solving and within a co‐operative industrial relations climate. It reports worker outcomes from negotiations to introduce teamworking across two steelworks. Moderate union branches and employees at one of the works (Scunthorpe) co‐operated with managers in joint problem‐solving teams to redesign work. However, contrary to mutual gains expectations, greater job insecurity at this works coerced union branches to accept teamworking agreements containing extensive demanning and a pay increase for fewer employees. Employees perceived greater job security at the other works (Teesside) and by rejecting joint problem‐solving with managers, militant union branches protected more jobs and extracted higher payment for teamworking. The findings indicate that job insecurity can lead co‐operative unions down a slippery slope of coerced co‐operation restricting employee benefits from teamworking.     

New Evidence on Initial Transition from Career Job to Retirement in Japan

The interval in time between leaving a career job and exit from the labor force is especially long for Japanese employees. We examine determinants of post‐career work arrangements from two perspectives: work status and the route to a second job. We show that these determinants differ between male and female workers and that the customary function of career employers to place their workers in a second job has declined since the middle of the 1990s.     

Local Multipliers,Mobility, and Agglomeration Economies

This paper demonstrates that when one new job is generated by attracting a new business in the tradable sector in a local economy, a significant number of additional jobs are created in the nontradable sector when labor mobility is high. However, these multipliers disappear when labor mobility is low. This paper confirms that regions with higher labor inflow have larger multipliers. Furthermore, the spillover effect of agglomeration economies in the tradable sector is significantly positive on the nontradable sector.     

Job Disamenities, Job Satisfaction, Quit Intentions, and Actual Separations: Putting the Pieces Together

We analyze the role of adverse working conditions in the determination of employees' quit behavior. Our data contain both detailed information on perceived job disamenities, job satisfaction, and quit intentions from a cross-section survey, and information on employees' actual job switches from longitudinal register data that can be linked to the survey. We show that job dissatisfaction that arises in adverse working conditions is related to job search and this in turn is related to actual job switches.     

The Effect of Employer-Sponsored Education on Job Mobility: Evidence from the U.S. Navy

We examined the impact of employer-sponsored part-time college education on job mobility, using the case of the Tuition Assistance (TA) program of the U.S. Navy. We used two modeling approaches—a bivariate probit model of job mobility and TA usage that accounts for the endogeneity of TA usage, and a propensity score model. The results from both models showed that TA usage significantly decreases the probability of staying in the Navy.     

The NBA, Exit Discrimination, and Career Earnings

The purpose of this article is threefold. First, it complements the many wage discrimination studies by examining exit discrimination in the NBA using a decade's worth of data (the 1980s). White players have a 36 percent lower risk of being cut than black players, ceteris paribus , translating into an expected career length of 7.5 seasons for an apparently similar player who is white and 5.5 seasons for the same player who is black. Second, the career earnings effect of exit discrimination in the 1980s is larger ($808,000) than the career earnings effect of wage discrimination ($329,000). Third, our data are consistent with the hypothesis that customer racial discrimination is the reason for the observed exit discrimination.     

Permanent Jobs,Employment Protection,and Job Content

Using Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) data for twenty‐one countries, I study the impact of employment protection laws (EPL) on job content. I find that workers’ use of influence, reading, writing, planning, numeracy and information and computer technology skills, and their task discretion, were higher in permanent than in temporary jobs. Moreover, stricter EPL on permanent jobs raised the gap in job content for influence, reading, writing, and planning skills used in permanent jobs versus temporary jobs.     

Underwork,Work‐Hour Insecurity,and A New Approach to Wage and Hour Regulation

When it was passed in 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) sought to address the “evils” of underpay and overwork by establishing an hourly minimum wage and requiring premium overtime pay. However, today's low‐wage, hourly workers more often face underwork than overwork, as well as fluctuating, unstable schedules, neither of which is addressed by the FLSA. This paper presents and assesses the effectiveness of an alternative approach to wage and hour regulation, the “reporting pay” guarantee. We begin by examining the problem of work‐hour insecurity, particularly employers’ practice of sending workers home early from scheduled shifts. We then move to a detailed assessment of state laws that require reporting pay, as well as reporting pay guarantees in union contracts and private‐employer practices that attempt to address the problem of work‐hour insecurity. We conclude by considering paths for strengthening such protections in law.