Contrasts in Labor Market Behavior in Northern Europe and the United States

Abstract

Students of the labor market have long been aware that differences in institutional settings and basic value patterns account in part for differences in the levels and incidence of labor mobility. In studies of labor markets in a single country, even one as large and industrially diversified as the United States, the influence of such factors on worker mobility and job attitudes tends to be obscured by the basic cultural homogeneity of the groups studied. Comparative studies of labor market behavior in a variety of industrially similar countries should reveal the extent to which institutional and normative factors affect mobility, and several such studies by American scholars are now in progress or planned for the near future. This article is a report of an exploratory survey in several northern European countries of patterns of labor mobility and workers' and employers' labor market behavior. In addition, the author also describes some of the research that has been undertaken abroad and indicates some topics on which comparative research should enlarge our understanding of how labor markets function. (Author's abstract courtesy EBSCO.)