Technological change and structural shifts in Sweden's Labor Market, 1870–1930: skill upgrading or deskilling?

ollowing the adoption of information and communication technologies (ICT), firms may react to increasing skill requirements either by training or hiring the new skills, or a combination of the two.Using matched datasets with about 1,000 French plants, we assess the relative importance of these external and internal labour market strategies. We show that skill upgrading following technological and organisational changes takes place mostly through internal labour markets adjustments. Consistently with the results in the literature, we find that the intensive use of ICT is associated with an upward shift in the occupational structure within firms. We show that about one third of the upgrading of the occupational structure is due to hiring and firing workers from and to the external labour market, whereas two-thirds are due to promotions. Moreover, we find no compelling evidence of external labour market strategies based on excess turnover. In contrast, French firms heavily rely on training in order to upgrade the skill level of their workforce. When looking at potential heterogeneity across firms in skill upgrading strategies, we find that all firms rely much more on promotions than on external movements in order to shift their occupational structure upward. In contrast, different training patterns are found across sectors : the use of ICT is strongly correlated with training for all occupational groups in manufacturing sectors, whereas this is not the case in services. This difference is robust to controlling for other sources of heterogeneity and may be explained by the fact that labour turnover is much higher in services than in manufacturing.

This paper develops a dynamic general equilibrium model which explicitly incorporates the skill distribution of heterogeneous workers. Workers are distributed heterogeneously in their individual skill level and can be endogenously sorted into different tasks using different technologies. In doing so, we study in depth the labor market and growth implications of the changes in skill distribution. Specifically, we consider two changes in the skill distribution in a given population, (i) the increased density in the upper tail (skill upgrading), and (ii) the increased density both in the lower and upper tails (skill polarization). It is shown that, though the labor market implications for individual workers are likely to be largely different and complex (skill polarization even leads to nonlinear labor market changes), both changes in the skill distribution may increase steady-state real investment and enhance growth so that all workers gain with time.

In the context of the world economy globalization, simultaneous increase in flexibility and volatility of the labour market, structural and demographic shifts, special attention should be paid to the employers' risk reduction associated with seasonal labour supply fluctuations. In the economic literature, the analysis of seasonality in the labor market is considered in terms of choosing the optimal time to apply for a job by job seekers However, the problem of optimal timing of recruitment by organizations remains poorly disclosed. The objective of this study is to forecast changes in labor supply at the labor market of Belarus, taking into account intra-annual seasonal fluctuations and occupation. In order to achieve the set goal the following tasks have been solved: search, analysis and selection of the sources of information about condition and dynamics of labour force supply in the labour market of Belarus; collection, purification, and analysis of statistical information about job seekers in Belarus; selection of the method for seasonal labour market analysis and construction of the seasonal wave, determination of the equations of trend; analysis of the obtained results. General scientific, economic method of analysis, method of grouping and graphical representations were used in the research. In the course of the research the authors built seasonal waves and obtained the equations of trends, which allow to make forecasts of labour force activity in the labour market of the Republic of Belarus in accordance with the type of activity. The research will allow the employers to: effectively develop the recruitment strategy; minimize the recruitment budget; choose the month when the job vacancy announcement will be submitted.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine how labour market changes impact the change in the aggregated household consumption, which is a topic that is under-researched in Japan.Design/methodology/approachThe author uses a three-step approach. The first step is a descriptive overview of the trends for cohort, age and year. The second step is to test the variation attributable to age-period-cohort interactions using APC analysis. The third step is to check if identifiable linear trend exists between the consumption changes and the labour market changes.FindingsThe analysis shows that major labour market changes per se do not contribute to household consumption adjustment. Meanwhile, the labour market conditions at the time of joining the labour force may be more important in shaping consumption during working life period than labour market changes during employment.Research limitations/implicationsThe cohorts are created based on birth years, which is a limitation imposed by the data availability rather than characteristics of the population group. The main reason behind the limited data points is the survey being conducted every five years and 2014 being the most recent year for which the data are available.Originality/valueResearch about cohort consumption in Japan is limited to the consumption composition changes or to the growing population of unmarried singles. This analysis will examine how labour market changes impact the change in the aggregated household consumption, which is a topic that is under-researched in Japan. In the analysis, the author uses the Python APC model and Python statsmodel OLS regression, providing the notebooks with code and full results in Appendices.

Changes in the Labor Market Since India's Economic Reforms

Changes in the Labor Market Since India's Economic Reforms

Between 1986 and 1996 rural New Zealand experienced some of the most depressed labour market conditions of the postwar period followed by a partial recovery in employment levels. This paper explores the differences in adaptation strategies for different life cycle stages and settlement types. Labour market and population accounting models are used to estimate intercensal net migration and labour market transitions respectively for different birth year cohorts for 1986-91 and 1991-96 period. The results for the two periods are compared to arrive at a first estimate of the respective role of labour market transitions and changes in net migration for each spatial unit and demographic group. Amongst other results, youth are estimated to migrate much less as an adaptation response than other age groups. Rural male and female labour market experiences over this period were strikingly different. Changes in net migration made up a much larger proportion of the adaptation for rural than minor urban or secondary urban areas.

Technological change and globalization have caused unprecedented transformations of labour markets, resulting in a growing division between workers who perform cognitive vs non-cognitive tasks. To date, only few studies have addressed the fertility effects of these long-term structural changes. This study fills that gap. We measure the cognitive task content of occupations using data from the Employment Survey of the German Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training, which we link to individual histories from the German Socio-Economic Panel 1984–2018. We find that women and men with non-cognitive jobs are increasingly less likely to enter parenthood; this is reflected in lower first-birth intensities but also in higher probabilities of childlessness compared with workers in highly cognitive jobs. These findings imply that structural shifts in the labour market are exacerbating disparities between low-skilled and highly skilled individuals, not only within the labour market but also in the realm of family formation.

PURPOSE: The theoretical aim of this study is to explore the nature of the “technological innovation–labor market” relationships presented recently in the literature, based on publications indexed in the Scopus and Web of Science databases. The empirical purpose is to examine these relationships in companies operating in the confectionery industry in Poland. METHODOLOGY: Literature studies, as well as a mixed-method empirical research approach, were used, including an online survey of engineers working in the confectionery industry and the case study method (with interviews and observation). FINDINGS: Publications from the past eleven years have covered the problems of the analyzed relationship but have not taken into consideration the market in Poland or the confectionery industry. More often than the classic literature, these publications present different relationships, not focusing mainly on the issue of unemployment resulting from technological innovation. Meanwhile, empirical studies show that the analyzed relationships are non-reciprocal. Fifty percent of the employees surveyed indicated that implementing technological innovations results in job losses. The remaining respondents were convinced that technological innovation has a neutral quantitative impact on the internal labor market. We identified that technological innovations have an impact on the labor market (both internal and external) more often than changes in the labor market affecting innovations, and that this impact is rather negative. Moreover, empirical research shows that technological innovations are positively connected with qualitative changes in the internal labor market. IMPLICATIONS: This study emphasizes the need for lifelong learning among employees and for a field for development at educational institutions. It should also draw the attention of top managers to the skills that their employees have now and should have in the future. ORIGINALITY AND VALUE: The paper presents an original typology of the relationships between technological innovation and the labor market, which can serve as the basis for further development and qualitative or quantitative research. The paper also presents pioneering research because previous studies were not based on a complex framework, including different kinds of impacts (from negative through neutral to positive), treating the labor market and technological innovations relative to each other as dependent or independent variables, or highlighting two types of labor market.

The labour market in Ukraine has undergone significant changes in recent years, driven by both pre-war economic processes and the full-scale war that has been ongoing since 2022. Key challenges include shifts in the employment structure, intensified migration processes, sectoral imbalances and the impact of economic instability on socio-labour relations. Research on this topic is highly relevant as it allows for an assessment of the crisis phenomena affecting the labour market and the identification of possible ways to stabilise and develop it. Another important aspect is the analysis of regional employment characteristics and the identification of the most vulnerable population groups facing difficulties in finding employment. Practical implications. The present study is devoted to the analysis of sectoral imbalances in Ukraine's labour market, which have emerged as a consequence of economic, social, and political transformations that have transpired in the context of the pre-war era and the ongoing war. A particular emphasis is placed on sectoral imbalances, employment levels, and migration processes, with an investigation into their impact on the labour market. Methodology. The research is grounded in a comprehensive analysis of statistical data from the State Statistics Service of Ukraine, the State Employment Service, official reports, and academic publications. A range of analytical methods are employed to assess labour market changes, including comparative analysis, structural analysis and statistical approaches. Research objective. The primary objective of this study is to identify key trends and imbalances in Ukraine's labour market, forecast its future development, and formulate recommendations to mitigate the negative impact of war and economic factors on employment. Conclusions. The study confirms the presence of significant sectoral distortions in Ukraine's labour market, which have been exacerbated by the war. The research has identified that economic instability, mobilisation, forced migration, and infrastructure destruction have resulted in alterations to the employment structure. There is an increasing demand for blue-collar workers, IT specialists, healthcare professionals, and the military-industrial sector. Concurrently, conventional industries such as trade and services have experienced substantial losses. The document puts forward a series of recommendations for adapting the labour market to contemporary challenges, including the establishment of retraining programs, support for small businesses, digitalization of employment, and stimulation of innovative economic sectors.

The introduction of programmable machines into blue-collar machining occupations affords an opportunity to study the conditions under which occupational skill upgrading occurs with technological change. How do workplaces that permit blue-collar occupations to take on programming responsibilities differ from those that do not? This paper presents a contingency model explaining how this choice ofjob design is mediated byfour types of factors: techno-economic forces, internal labor market structures, institutional mechanisms for governing the labor-management relationship, and the organizational context. The data are from a 1986-87 national survey of production managers in a sizestratified random sample of manufacturing establishments in 21 industries. A multivariate logistic regression analysis reveals that the technology and product market alone do not determine job design. The least complex organizations (small plant, small firm) tend to offer the greatest opportunities for skill upgrading, independent of techno-economic conditions a finding at variance with current labor market segmentation theory.

It should be noted that for many industrial enterprises, the priority is no longer to establish a financial and economic system with an appropriate rigid organizational structure to counter existing threats. Thus, the stability and development of the labour market determine the sustainability and competitiveness of industrial enterprises in modern conditions. It has been proven that changes in the labour market significantly affect the activities of modern industrial enterprises. In such conditions, it is extremely problematic to ignore the strengthening of changes in the labour market. The high dynamics of changes in the labour market require increasing investments in such structures, and not all enterprises are ready to invest in this. The relevance of rethinking the principles of how changes in the labour market affect the system of ensuring the financial and economic security of a modern industrial enterprise is growing. Therefore, our goal is to present a mechanism for ensuring the financial and economic security of an enterprise under conditions of dynamic changes in the labour market. The research methodology involves the use of a method for assessing parametric impact, which allows systematizing a series of factors according to their level of influence on the given object. As a result, a mechanism has been developed to ensure the financial and economic security of a modern industrial enterprise based on a preliminary assessment of the impact of a set of identified labour market transformation factors on this process. This has allowed for better formalization and solving the task of enhancing the level of financial and economic security for industrial enterprises. The formed mechanism for ensuring the financial and economic security of a modern industrial enterprise focuses on the personnel component and is aimed at increasing the efficiency of personnel work in conditions of dynamic changes in the labour market. However, some aspects, such as taking into account and detailing the components of financial and economic security and the impact of labour market changes on each of these components, were not addressed and are considered limitations to be taken into account in future research.

My dissertation consists of three independent chapters in the field of labor economics. The first chapter studies the economic forces underlying employment declines and skill upgrading in the U.S. manufacturing sector around the turn of the 21st century. The second chapter assesses the role of Japanese import competition in explaining stalled racial progress in the U.S. during the 1970s and 1980s. The third chapter explores end-of-life medical spending for dogs who have been diagnosed with cancer. In the first chapter, I propose a new method to decompose employment changes by skill type into changes caused by output, labor supply, production task concentration, and labor-augmenting technology, using market equilibrium conditions within a constant elasticity of substitution production framework. I apply this method to manufacturing industries between 1990 and 2007, a period of steep employment declines for non-college workers. I find that labor-augmenting technology, by reducing labor per unit of output, is the leading source of displacement overall. However, a shift toward high-skill tasks is even more important in displacing non-college workers, who represent a majority of employment. In contrast, output changes have little influence on upskilling or aggregate job loss. In applications, I explore the impacts of import penetration from China and susceptibility to automation and offshoring. Of these, only offshoring is associated with some task upgrading, suggesting these mechanisms are not the primary drivers of this source of employment loss.The second chapter is written with Timothy N. Bond. We assess the impact of the rapid rise in imports from Japan in the 1970s and 1980s on domestic labor markets. We use commuting zone level variation in exposure and stratify our outcomes by racial groups. We find it decreased black manufacturing employment, labor force participation, and median earnings, and increased public assistance recipiency. However these manufacturing losses for blacks were offset by increased white manufacturing employment. This compositional shift appears to have been caused by skill upgrading in the manufacturing sector. Losses were concentrated among black high school dropouts and gains among college educated whites. We also see a shifting of manufacturing employment towards professionals, engineers, and college educated production workers. We find no evidence the heterogeneous effects of import competition can be explained by unionization, prejudice, or changes in spatial mismatch. Our results can explain 66-86% of the relative decrease in black manufacturing employment, 17-23% of the relative rise in black non-labor force participation, and 34-44% of the relative decline in black median male earnings from 1970-1990. The third chapter, written with Kevin Mumford, contributes to the literature on the causal effect of end-of-life medical spending by focusing on the pet health care industry. Using administrative records and an identification strategy based on the timing of pet health insurance benefit renewal, we create an environment in which arrival of insurance benefits is quasi-random. We focus on how the availability of health insurance reimbursement funds affects spending, veterinary visits, and mortality over a two-year period after a serious cancer diagnosis. Increases in the generosity of health insurance reimbursement causes increases in both spending and veterinary visits, but we do not find evidence of a causal effect on mortality.

The article provides an assessment of the status, dynamics of changes in the Ukrainian domestic labor market and employment under conditions of the full-scale war. The situation in the domestic labor market is investigated on the basis of the synthesis of socio-logical, statistical information, analytics of personnel agencies, the NBU report – in the context of the need to stabilize the state of labor sphere for the long-term post-war restoration of the Ukrainian economy. The main personnel and regional disproportions, problems and losses that have arisen in the labor sphere during the period of full-scale invasion and it’s devastating consequences are revealed. Particular attention is paid to the sociological analysis of the main attitudes of the able-bodied Ukrainian population in terms of employment and behavior in the domestic labor market, which should be taken into account when developing and implementing the socio-economic policy of stabilizing the state of the labor sphere and further post-war restoration of the Ukrainian economy. The impact on the labor market which was provided with losses and damage to production assets as a result of hostilities, has been considered. The means of stabilizing the state and further post-war restoration of the labor sphere and the national economy through the involvement of digitalization resources are proposed. It was revealed that distance work is a trend that continues its growth in the labor market of Ukraine even in war. Therefore, special attention is paid to the spread and further possibilities of using distance employment as a way of stabilizing the labor market under critical and force majeure conditions. The need to introduce a ICT-based system of monitoring the state and dynamics of labor sphere and the changes in the labor market under the conditions of war is substantiated, sn order to ensure comprehensive diagnosis and adoption of reasonable management decisions for stabilization and post-war restoration of the labor sphere. This is a prerequisite for the implementation of the proposed by the MOT “build back better” principle, that means to ensure a more stable, inclusive, environmental and smart development with the widespread use of smart technologies (based on the formation of an expanded digital infrastructure).

This timely and extremely interesting collection of papers on labour, employment and economic growth by K. V. Ramaswamy will be of keen interest to an interdisciplinary lot of social scientists: obviously economists, and also, sociologists (gender discrimination), geographers (inter-state variations) and legal scholars (Supreme Court decisions). The reason I say timely is because these scholarly essays critically update our knowledge on what has transpired in the Indian labour market during the last two decades in one elegantly produced volume. At the outset, let me state that I needed to be updated, and hence found reading through the various essays very rewarding. I will be undoubtedly using many of these essays in my courses. The book consists of two parts. Part 1 on economic development and employment consists of seven papers and Part 2 on employment and labour law consists of four papers. Part 1 opens with an introduction and a succinct review of the papers in this collection by the editor that sets the stage on what is to follow. Given that India needs to create 10 million new jobs annually for the next 10 years to keep absorbing additions to the working age population, the invariable question arises: what limits both the growth of manufacturing and as well as employment in this sector in India? The popular perception is that Indian economic growth has been ‘jobless’ in the manufacturing sector and employment expansion in the services sector is only a recent phenomenon. A range of labour market issues arises in the context of this background during the last two decades. Specifically, the withdrawal of large numbers of female rural workers from the labour force, wage and employment discrimination against women workers in the overall economy, the existence of de facto flexibility in spite of rigid employment protection legislation that has facilitated economic growth, and lastly the perception that the judiciary/courts have become ‘pro-employers’ during the last two decades. All these are empirical questions that are examined using the most recent available databases in the essays. The first paper by Thomas presents an informative overview of the labour market during the 2000s based on the NSSO employment and unemployment reports. Three significant facts are emphasized: (1) for the first time, an absolute decline in the size of the agricultural workforce has occurred (2009–2010 survey), (2) there has been a substantial increase in the student population, especially among females in the rural sector, and (3) during 2004–2012, the construction sector generated half of the incremental non-agricultural employment growth in India and all of rural employment growth. Against this backdrop the author examines two contending hypotheses of ‘jobless growth’ versus ‘structural shifts’ in the labour market and believes D. Bhattacherjee (&) Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, Kolkata, India e-mail: debashish@iimcal.ac.in