British Labour Market Research Articles

The Impact of Immigration Policy on the British Labor Market after Brexit

The Impact of Immigration Policy on the British Labor Market after Brexit

Exploring the agency of skilled refugees in the British labour market

AbstractDrawing on the analytical distinction between agency and social structure, I provide insights into four strategies used by skilled refugees to navigate labour market constraints: pre‐empting, to avoid present labour market constraints; circumventing present constraints, to realise future benefits; persisting in the search for skilled jobs via mobilising longstanding patterns of thought and action; and exercising voice to drive future system improvements that benefit similar others. It is striking how these strategies harmonised self‐interest and others' interests. I highlight the interplay between social structure and agency in labour market strategies to depict skilled refugees as reflexive agents of change. I highlight gender‐based nuances in skilled refugees' labour market moves and conclude by outlining the implications of my findings for HRM practice.

Degrees of demand: a task-based analysis of the British graduate labour market

Abstract This study investigates the evolving demand for graduate skills in the British workforce, leveraging a task-based approach with data from the Skills and Employment Survey Series. Focused on the changing importance of job tasks related to graduate skills, the research explores the mapping of these tasks to educational attainment, discerns the price employers pay for tasks requiring graduate skills, and addresses regional variation in graduate supply and demand. Despite a slowing growth of graduate skills requirements post-2006, we find a stable assignment of graduate education with job tasks and an overall flat task price related to graduate skills requirements. We present regional evidence showing education expansion rather than exogenous factors drove high-skills demand, balancing the development of supply and demand in the British graduate labour market over 1997–2017.

Invisible Stripes? A Field Experiment on the Disclosure of a Criminal Record in the British Labour Market and the Potential Effects of Introducing Ban-The-Box Policies

Abstract Labour market discrimination against individuals with criminal records may be unfair, ineffective and counterproductive. This article describes a field experiment designed to indicate whether job applicants disclosing a criminal record in the British labour market have a lower probability of success than equivalent applicants not disclosing criminal records. The research also provides insights into the potential effects of introducing a Ban-The-Box (BTB) policy in the United Kingdom, which would prohibit questions on prior convictions in the first stages of the recruitment process. The results confirm the existence of criminal record discrimination and suggest that introducing a BTB policy would increase job prospects for White applicants with criminal records, but not for members of ethnic minorities.

An Analysis of the Gender Inequality Issues in the United Kingdom’s Employment Relationship—Based on the Current Situation and Theoretical Approach

The impact of the Covid-19 epidemic on the British labor market has sparked concern for disadvantaged groups in employment relations. This paper examines the current state of gender inequality in the British labor market and the three theories that attempt to explain it: human capital theory, social and cultural norms theory, and institutional discrimination theory, to answer the question of how to improve gender inequality in the British labor market. Through a critical analysis of three approaches to equality and diversity and the principal actors in industrial relations, this paper concludes that a combination of liberal, radical, and diverse approaches is advantageous and that the state and main actors in industrial relations must collaborate more.

Does the Muslim penalty in the British labour market dissipate after accounting for so-called “sociocultural attitudes”?

ABSTRACT Using multilevel modelling, this paper investigates ethno-religious penalties in unemployment and inactivity among men and women using the Understanding Society survey. The paper confirms previous findings of a Muslim penalty and a British labour market hierarchized by colour (ethnicity) and religion (culture). However, by including a greater range of ethnic groups the paper provides a corrective to accounts in the sociological literature that being White is not a protection against the Muslim penalty. Rather, while affiliation with the Muslim White British group does not appear to be associated with penalization, Muslim Arabs who traditionally identify as White are found to experience significant disadvantage. This suggests that the Muslim penalty might also be moderated by a person’s country of origin. The paper also finds that considerable penalties remain for Muslims even after adjusting for so-called “sociocultural attitudes”, challenging the assumption that value orientations offer a suitable explanation for the Muslim penalty.

THE IMPACT OF MUSLIM WOMEN’S AWARENESS OF THE CULTURAL RESPONSIBILITIES AND COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT ON THE EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES AND EMPLOYERS’ PRACTICES IN BRITAIN

<p>This study aims at shedding light on the impact of cultural responsibilities and community engagement of Muslim women on employment opportunities and employers’ practices in the British labour market. The descriptive-analytical approach was adopted. Also, a questionnaire was designed to collect data from Muslim women who are qualified to work and either have a job or seeking one, considering that they belong to different backgrounds in the UK. The cultural responsibilities and identity engagement don’t have a strong influence on improving Muslim women’s chances to get hired. Even though to a certain level there are positive indicators of adaptation to the British culture. Moreover, the respondents don’t perceive employment opportunities and employers’ practices in a highly positive way. Even though that most of them are living in the UK for a long period of time and some of them are British citizens, in addition, they are educationally qualified and enjoy a high level of English language proficiency. It is recommended that Muslim women should exercise more positive changes regarding their cultural responsibilities and identity engagement. Furthermore, Muslim women need to be more active in their environment and the labour market to get better access to jobs. In addition, it is recommended to have the British employers follow new policies of recruitment that ensure diversity and equality towards minority groups, especially Muslim women. As this will result in influencing positively employment opportunities for Muslim women.</p><p> </p><p><strong>JEL</strong>: E24; L20</p><p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0938/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

United Kingdom Anti-crisis Alternative.

The article deals with the factors that ensure the sustainability of the reproduction of the British socio-economic model in the long term. Some features of the conceptual role of the UK in the formation of the global world order were studied. The impact of the COVID-19 on the economy of the United Kingdom was shown and the reasons for the deepest decline in production in the history of the country were summarized. The factors of chronic decline in productivity on the British labor market and strategic approaches to solving this problem were presented. Some provisions of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement between the UK and the European Union are discussed. The concept of sovereign money is analyzed as a possible response of British economic experts to the challenges of modern crises.

Migrant networks, information flows and the place of residence: The case of Polish immigrants in the UK

AbstractNumerous studies in the field of international migration focus on utilizing migrant networks in migration process, outlining their role in the choice of destination country as well as in the job search process. However, relatively few of the studies discuss migrant networks’ role in the choice of a specific location within destination cities. This paper contributes to this research area by providing additional insights into the motives behind choosing place of residence by immigrants in contemporary European cities. In our paper, we use data of a tailor‐made survey of 610 Polish immigrants, who emigrated from Poland to the UK shortly after 2004, that is, after opening of the British labour market for Polish citizens. Our study results reveal that propensity towards living in the Polish neighbourhood is inversely correlated with migrants’ English language proficiency. Moreover, we discover that networking within the Polish diaspora is to a large extent limited to family and close acquaintances, which most likely results from the limited generalized trust towards other Poles. Based on our study results, we argue that settling in geographical proximity of migrant's ethnic group is likely to maintain its relevance in the contemporary cities, especially in case of immigrants with poor destination language skills.

New Evidence on Disability Benefit Claims in Britain: The Role of Health and the Local Labour Market

During the 1980s and 1990s, there was a steep rise in disability benefit claims in Britain, especially among older male workers, and the debate centred on the relative generosity of these benefits as well as the effects of deindustrialization. Since that time, the disability benefit system has been subject to a series of reforms, all largely aimed at reducing the number of claims and targeting benefits more closely to those with the greatest health need. At the same time, the labour market has also evolved, and until the recent Covid‐19 pandemic, it had a historically low level of unemployment, accompanied by falling real earnings. We use individual longitudinal data from 2010 to 2018 in a dynamic panel framework to explore the relative importance of health status, benefit generosity and local labour market conditions for disability benefit claims in the modern British labour market. We focus particularly on spatial variation in claims, and find that, in line with older evidence, while health status is clearly important, geographic variation in labour market conditions still influences the propensity to claim those disability benefits that are conditional on not working.

Антикризисная альтернатива в Великобритании

The article deals with the factors that ensure the sustainability of the reproduction of the British socio-economic model in the long term. Some features of the conceptual role of the UK in the formation of the global world order were studied. The impact of the COVID-19 on the economy of the United Kingdom was shown and the reasons for the deepest decline in production in the history of the country were summarized. The factors of chronic decline in productivity on the British labor market and strategic approaches to solving this problem were presented. Some provisions of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement between the UK and the European Union are discussed. The concept of sovereign money is analyzed as a possible response of British economic experts to the challenges of modern crises.

United Kingdom Anti-Crisis Alternative

The article deals with the factors that ensure the sustainability of the reproduction of the British socio-economic model in the long term. Some features of the conceptual role of the UK in the formation of the global world order were studied. The impact of the COVID-19 on the economy of the United Kingdom was shown and the reasons for the deepest decline in production in the history of the country were summarized. The factors of chronic decline in productivity on the British labor market and strategic approaches to solving this problem were presented. Some provisions of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement between the UK and the European Union are discussed. The concept of sovereign money is analyzed as a possible response of British economic experts to the challenges of modern crises. © 2021 Ltd Integration: Education and Science. All rights reserved.

Labor market polarization in Britain and Germany: A cross-national comparison using longitudinal household data

Since the 1980s, the share of employment for mid-wage occupations in many advanced countries has decreased while wages for the same occupations have declined relative to the top and bottom of the distribution. The hypothesized explanation of this employment and wage polarization is a phenomenon called Routine-Biased Technical Change (RBTC), wherein new machines and computers substitute for workers in mid-wage occupations that have a high content of routine tasks. Taking advantage of panel data for Britain and Germany, this study follows the work of Cortes (2016) and examines the occupational mobility of workers between occupations that vary in the intensity of routine tasks. Among workers in routine occupations, higher unobserved skills are positively related to switching to higher-paid, non-routine cognitive occupations, while those who have lower levels of unobserved skills are more likely to move to lower-paid, non-cognitive manual occupations. This occupational mobility has resulted in faster future wage growth for all job switchers relative to those who stayed in the routine occupations. The wage polarization found in the British labor market resembles that observed in the US by Cortes (2016) in that routine workers transit down to manual jobs and upwards to cognitive jobs. However, in Germany, which is characterized by different educational and labor market institutions, most workers move from routine occupations to more highly compensated cognitive ones in the face of automation.

Women, labour market outcomes and religion: evidence from the British labour market

ABSTRACT We analyse a large-scale UK quarterly Labour Force Survey data covering a period of 16 years (2002–2017) to compare labour market outcomes for women of different religious and ethnic denominations. The paper contributes to the existing literature in analysing three labour outcomes: economic activity (participation), unemployment and occupational choice. While the religious penalties facing Muslim women in unemployment were notoriously high and persistent, the results suggest that their participation is significantly lower. Finally, the occupational distribution of Muslim women shows they are similar to white Christian women in higher occupations but have a much higher probability of belonging to lower occupations.

The Economic Consequences of Accidents at Work

AbstractThis paper investigates the economic consequences of workplace accidents in the British labour market. For the empirical analysis, I use data on employment and earnings from the British Household Panel Survey and exploit fixed effects estimators to control for time‐invariant unobserved workers’ characteristics. I provide evidence that accidents at work negatively affect both job opportunities and workers’ earnings. First, employment probabilities following a state of injury are significantly lower. This effect persists over time and is stronger in those regions where unemployment rate is higher. Second, a serious workplace accident also results in significant delayed wage penalties, which increase with the accident's seriousness.

Whiteness, Migration and Integration into the British Labour Market

This paper explores the situation of new groups of immigrants by focusing on various categories within the heterogeneous group of individuals which comprise the White population. We combine information on country of origin, ethnicity and religion derived from the UK Labour Force Survey (LFS) to subdivide the White-British, White-Irish and White-Other categories into nine groups, each of which comprises at least 0.1% of the LFS sample. The analyses contrast the recent labour market experiences of eight of these with those of the Christian White-British majority (who form 73.6% of the LFS sample studied). We then investigate labour market outcomes such as over-qualification, unemployment, longer-term unemployment, discouraged worker effects, part-time working and forced part-time work. The participation of the Christian Eastern European group is markedly different to the other categories in terms of likelihood of working part-time either through choice or because they were unable to find full-time work, and they are less likely to become discouraged workers. We suggest that this is because their motivation in migrating to the UK is work related and they are unlikely to remain if the desired employment is unavailable.

Racial discrimination in Britain, 1969-2017: a meta-analysis of field experiments on racial discrimination in the British labour market.

Field experiments represent the gold standard for determining whether discrimination occurs. Britain has a long and distinguished history of field experiments of racial discrimination in the labour market, with pioneering studies dating back to 1967 and 1969. This article reviews all the published reports of these and subsequent British field experiments of racial discrimination in the labour market, including new results from a 2016/17 field experiment. The article finds enduring contours of racial discrimination in Britain. Firstly, there is an enduring pattern of modest discrimination against white minorities of European heritage in contrast to much greater risks of discrimination faced by the main non-white groups, suggesting a strong racial component to discrimination. Secondly, while there is some uncertainty about the magnitude of the risks facing applicants with Chinese and Indian names, the black Caribbean, black African and Pakistani groups all face substantial and very similar risks of discrimination. Thirdly, there is no significant diminution in risks of discrimination over time either for Caribbeans or for South Asians as a whole. These results are broadly in line with those from the ethnic penalties literature, suggesting that discrimination is likely to be a major factor explaining the disproportionately and enduringly high unemployment rates of ethnic minorities.

Capital without its field: educated Bangladeshi women in the British labour market

ABSTRACT The paper investigates the relatively underexplored field of educated first-generation Bangladeshi immigrant women’s labour market experience in Britain. Applying an intersectional lens using Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of ‘capital’, ‘habitus’ and ‘field’ [1986. “The Forms of Capital.” In Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, edited by John G. Richardson, 241–258. New York: Greenwood] and Nira Yuval-Davis’s ‘situational intersectionality’ [2015. “Situated Intersectionality and Social Inequality.” Raisons Politiques 2 (58): 91–100], the paper examines immigrant women’s employment barriers and their diverse strategies to deal with the barriers in the UK labour market. Analysing twenty-eight participants’ narratives into three categories: (i) Full-time professionals, (ii) Part-time wage earners and (iii) Economically inactive women, the paper highlights how the issue of capital mobilisation affected South Asian immigrant women’s employment choices. The participants’ situational differences within a complex nexus of unequal capital portability, non-recognition of skills, and their limited familiarity with British cultural capital, family’s economy and their lifecycle stages shaped the immediate and long-term choices they could make. The analysis emphasises the necessity to examine contemporary first-generation Bangladeshi as well as South Asian, Muslim women’s employment from a capital mobilisation perspective taking into account the situations within which they operate.

Labour frictions in interwar Britain: industrial reshuffling and the origin of mass unemployment

Abstract This article estimates the matching function of the British labour market for the period of 1921–1934. Changes in matching efficiency can explain both employment resilience during the Great Depression and the high structural unemployment throughout the interwar period. Early in the 1920s, matching efficiency improved due to the development of the retail industry. However, the econometric results show a structural break in March 1927, related to a major industrial reshuffling that reduced the demand for workers in staple industries. Since these industries were geographically concentrated, there was an increase in the average distance between the unemployed and vacancies, and matching efficiency declined.

Can Religious Affiliation Explain the Disadvantage of Muslim Women in the British Labour Market?

This article aims to explain the labour market penalties among Muslim women in Britain. It draws on theories of intersectionality and colour/cultural racism to argue that the labour market experience of British-Muslim women is multiply determined via criteria of ascription such as ethnicity, migration status, race and religion rather than criteria of achievement. The study uses data from the Labour Force Survey (2002–2013) with a large sample (N=245,391) of women aged 19–65 years. The overarching finding suggests that most Muslim women, regardless of their multiple ascriptive identities, generation and levels of qualifications, still face significant penalties compared with their White-British Christian counterparts. The penalties for some groups, such as Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Black-Muslim women, are harsher than for Indian and White-Muslim women, demonstrating how different social markers and multiple identities have contingent relationships to multiple determinants and outcomes.