Alternative Labour Market Research Articles

An Empirical Study of New High School and College Graduates’ Wages Using Alternative Labor Market Models

For economic and demographic reasons, beginning around 1970, the market for new college graduates soared, depressing predicted returns to investments in higher education instruction. Among alternative labor markets models, wage competition and job competition predict different outcomes for an exogenous increase in supplies of educated labor. Using wage competition, R. Freeman predicts declines in relative wages for groups whose supply increased. Using job competition, L. Thurow predicts market-wide wage declines because of bumping effects. However, regression studies based on the respective models account for very little of the variability in wages of new labor market entrants during the period 1966–1976.

Viewpoint

In many Western nations unemployment is much higher than official statistics indicate. Many who would work if the opportunities were there do not register as unemployed. Additionally, public funds are used to create an alternative labour market. In the UK, for example, measures introduced to boost employment include the Temporary Employment Subsidy; the Small Firms Employment Subsidy; the Job Release Scheme; the Special Temporary Employment Programme; Youth Opportunities; the Community Industry Scheme; the Adult Employment Subsidy; and the Short‐time Working Compensation Scheme. The cost of this panoply of measures is in excess of £400 million per annum, which when added to the disguised employment subsidies — special protection for certain industries, regional grants and the like — totals over £1 billion.

A Note on Discrimination in Employment and its Effects on Black Youths

ABSTRACTThis article suggests a Gateway Effects theory of discrimination in employment which attempts to link discrimination at the entry port into a job with its effects on later employment experiences and behaviour. A longitudinal sample of black and white 1971 school-leavers from Bradford and Sheffield was used to propose this theory. An attempt is made to generate a theory about discrimination which explains the position of black British school-leavers and which also incorporates the concerns of existing alternative American-based labour market theories about discrimination. Several implications for policies about discrimination are deduced.

The Private Demand for Education in Relation to Labour Market Conditions in Less-Developed Countries

Excerpt] In this paper, we construct a model of the demand for education in relation to labor market conditions in less developed countries to try to understand why a high demand for education might be expected to persist in countries characterized by a substantial surplus of educated labor. It might be argued that the continued demand for education merely reflects the failure of citizens to adjust their behavior to current labor market conditions. This position implies that the demand for education will fall, perhaps drastically, as expectations come into line with reality. However, in contrast to this position, we demonstrate in this paper that under several alternative labor market scenarios the sustained private demand for education is quite rational and can be explained by the net private benefits which the educated individual receives in the labor market.