Changing Employment Patterns Research Articles

Growing without changing: A tale of Egypt's weak productivity growth

AbstractDespite fast growth during 2000–2010, Egypt saw limited productivity gains from sectoral labor reallocation over the past three decades. Using a novel data set and updated measures of productivity growth induced by structural change in employment patterns across a large set of countries, we explain why Egypt failed to significantly reduce unemployment, lower poverty, or raise productivity. We use cross‐country comparisons, counterfactual scenarios, and regression analysis to demonstrate that limited openness to trade, weak export diversification, and low access to finance prevented Egypt from tapping the growth potential of a structural shift in labor towards skilled manufacturing and private services, locking Egypt instead into a “low value trap.” The paper suggests policy implications on how to overcome impediments to efficient sectoral reallocation of workers.

Changing Employment Pattern and Agricultural Distress in Rural Areas of Jammu and Kashmir

A study of employment pattern in a society reflects the economic profi le of its people. It is an indicator of the economic diff erentiation of people in an area. In a traditional agrarian society, the population though engaged in agriculture was largely classified as landowners or as landless labour with a small proportion engaged in artisanal activities. Land as an asset provided power and authority in this context. In a capitalist society, the occupational diversification moves from agriculture to industry and finally to the services sector. The development of the industrial sector was historically seen as advancement for the rural population with the predominance of better employment opportunities as industrial workers. In the case of developing countries, there has been growth in services sector rather than employment in industries. This growth in employment in favor of services is skewed as most of the people are employed in the unorganised sector. This paper will study the movement of labour out of agriculture to other sectors of economy in rural areas of Jammu and Kashmir. It will try to analyse the direction and reason for movement of this labour. This will be preceded with a brief theoretical discussion on changes in employment patterns in rural areas.

Determining the odds of employment in Pakistan

PurposeThe paper aims to identify the determinants of employment in Pakistan. In light of the jobless growth Pakistan has experienced starting from 2000, this is a valid concern. The paper discusses the structural relationship between employment and growth in Pakistan and analyzes it empirically within an economic geography framework.Design/methodology/approachThe paper applies a Logit regression analysis to data from Pakistan Social and Living Standard Measurement Survey for the years 2010, 2012 and 2014. While this survey is published annually, the paper uses data at the district level, which is available only every alternate year. Data are collected at the individual level and can be mapped back to the household level. Each wave of data covers at least 70,000 households. The survey provides data on employment status, health, education, sanitation, economic situation and asset ownership. The analysis is conducted using Stata. The paper uses computer vision to present and trace changing employment patterns in Pakistan over time. To do so, the paper uses MATLAB. The data are transformed to KMV format and the plotting is done using Google Earth.FindingsThe paper shows how household characteristics affect the odds of employment in Pakistan, finding evidence of provincial disparities. Moreover, the paper shows that non-wage income from assets reduces the odds of being employed. The paper identifies the various income thresholds for the five income sources examined to have an impact on the odds of employment.Originality/valueThe novelty of this research is the identification of the determinants of employment in Pakistan and their analysis from the perspective of economic geography. This paper should be useful for policymakers and international financial organizations concerned with structural change in Pakistan.

Organizational citizenship behaviors in the era of changing employment patterns

PurposeThe increasing flexibility and discontinuity of labor relations have been associated with the development of new forms of psychological contracts as well as the development of more self-directed and mobile career attitudes. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between the forms of psychological contract and protean/boundaryless career attitudes on the one hand and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) on the other.Design/methodology/approachIn total, 458 employees of three large Italian organizations were sampled through a self-report questionnaire. Zero-order correlations were carried out to examine the associations between study variables while dominance analysis, along with multiple linear regression, was used for evaluating their unique contribution with respect to OCB.FindingsOCB were positively predicted by relational and balanced psychological contracts, protean career attitude and boundaryless mindset.Practical implicationsOrganizations must pay particular attention to the content of the psychological contract and the career attitudes of their employees because they influence their willingness to carry out OCB.Originality/valueThe results add new evidence to the careers literature in terms of boundary conditions with regard to the effects of protean and boundaryless career attitudes as well as different forms of psychological contracts.

Membership Recruitment and Restructuring of the Trade Unions for Effective Functioning of Public Sector Unions

The phenomenon of increased union numbers as an answer to the call by workers who felt otherwise under-represented, and to get recognition, have put forward alternative agendas to the larger unions. Some new unions, it is argued, give a voice to workers in a specific sector or region where established unions have little presence. Others seem to have sprung up in the cracks caused by the fragmentation of the industrial structure in an organisation. Some would postulate it is caused by greedy trade union leaders who want to remain in leadership and with an intention to appropriate union resources to themselves. The failure of many unions to respond to changes in employment patterns has further diminished their power. Few unions manage to appeal to younger workers and/ or contract or part-time employees

Family matters: The contribution of households’ educational and employment composition to income inequality

The rise in inequality in most industrial countries has drawn attention to the social and economic processes underlying it. This study examines how changing educational attainment and employment patterns of women (mainly) are impacting households’ income distribution, with Israel as a case study. The level of income inequality in Israel, which is one of the highest in the Western world, has risen significantly in recent decades, along with a rise in education and labor force participation, especially among women. Using counterfactual analysis of the Theil index between the years 1983 and 2008, our findings show that the share of highly educated households has soared, together with a rise in the share of fulltime dual-earner households. There has also been an increase in the share of doubly fortunate households: both highly educated and fulltime dual-earner. All these changes have contributed to the rise in income inequality. The study emphasizes the importance of the joint change in educational attainment and participation level as an important mechanism behind the rise in income inequality.

Changes in employment patterns and in the composition of households and a Basic Income

Changes in employment patterns and in the composition of households and a Basic Income

Rural labour employment and livelihoods in tribal villages of eastern India

This study examines the changing employment and livelihood patterns of rural labour households in tribal villages of eastern India. The study is based on the high frequency panel data collected under the ICAR-ICRISAT project on Village Dynamics Studies in eastern India from 2010 to 2014. The findings revealed that the work participation rate of landless labour households had a declining trend whereas that of land owning labour households had a mixed trend in tribal villages of Jharkhand. The employment in the farm sector declined for males but increased for women. Employment in non-farm sectors registered an increase in both the genders and the magnitude of the increase was higher in the non-farm sector as compared to the farm sector. Similar trend was observed for wage rate which showed faster growth in the non-farm wage compared to the farm wage. Both the sectors witnessed an increase in the labourer’s wages during the past four years, however, the increase was much higher in the non-farm sector than the farm sector. The study also indicated that male labourers were employed at higher wages than their female counterparts in both sectors but the difference was narrowed down during last four years. A wage determinant analysis revealed that a healthy, educated, landowning adult male labour is likely to get higher wages than others. Non-farm wage employment is emerging as the most important source of income on labour households contributing 63 to 74% to their total income. The survey further revealed that income from farming constituted only 6 to 13% of the total income of labour households, but it showed increasing trend due to implementation of various mega agricultural development projects in the state.

Increasing Inequality in Lifetime Earnings: A Tale of Educational Upgrading and Changing Employment Patterns

This paper provides a detailed decomposition analysis of rising lifetime earnings inequality in Germany using individual employment biographies constructed from high-quality administrative data. The results show that significant parts of rising lifetime earnings inequality among West German men born between the years 1955 and 1974 can be attributed to a lower labor market participation (as a consequence of longer periods of both part-time and non-employment) as well as the educational expansion among later cohorts. The paper also points towards potentially important changes in the penalty linked to employment interruptions, but only finds a moderate impact of skill-biased technological change beyond educational upgrading. The analysis reveals similarities with the development in the U.S. in the sense that the cohorts studied did not only face an increase in inequality, but also a stagnation in earnings for a major part of their career. This trend is even stronger when looking at changes within education groups.

Changing contours of employment in England and Wales between 1921 and 2011: Industry, occupation, gender and locality

The paper examines the contours of employment change in England and Wales between 1921 and 2011 using data from the respective Censuses of Population. The main focus of the analysis is on four related sets of phenomena: changing patterns of employment across industrial sectors, changes to patterns of gender and paid employment, changes to occupational segregation by gender and the changing contours of locality differences within England and Wales over the period. Various sociological debates about structural change are probed in detail. The paper concludes that whilst there have been a range of significant changes to these phenomena, there have also been some marked structural continuities.

Post–Family Wage, Postindustrial Society: Reframing the Gender and Family Order through Working Mothers in Reagan's America

“We are as much a society dependent on female labor, and thus in need of a child-care system, as we are a society dependent on the automobile, and thus in need of roads.” In the 1980s business leaders, social scientists, women's rights advocates, and policy makers agreed on a startling new fact: working mothers had moved to the center of the nation's economic life. Foot soldiers of the new service economy, their labor shaped the nation's work force and future competitiveness. As Working Woman magazine told its readers in November 1986, “women's incomes—women's own incomes—and our new life-styles are at the heart of a restructuring of this country's economy, not only changing employment patterns but deciding the fates of whole business sectors and redistributing the nation's wealth.” By boosting “slumping family incomes,” the magazine crowed, these female workers stimulated billions in new child care and “homey chore” businesses. Americans faced a new reality—working mothers had become a pillar of the economy.2

Foreign direct investment and inequality in developing countries: Does sector matter?

AbstractScholars have studied the relationship between inward foreign direct investment (FDI) and within‐country income inequality in cross‐national contexts, but have not empirically investigated how FDI in different sectors might affect inequality in different ways. We use error correction models to analyze sectoral FDI data compiled from UNCTAD investment reports in 60 middle‐income countries from 1989 to 2010, arguing that FDI in services is more likely to be associated with inequality than FDI in other sectors. We argue that skill biases and changes in employment patterns associated with service sector investments can help explain these findings.

Later-life employment trajectories and health

Abstract Background Despite the recent policy push to keep older adults in the labour force, we know almost nothing about the potential health consequences of working longer. Drawing on a life course approach that considers stability and change in employment patterns, this study examines the relationship between long-term labour market involvement in later life and self-rated health. Methods Our data are from the Health and Retirement Study (1992–2012) for the cohort born 1931–1941 (N = 6522). We used optimal matching analysis to map employment trajectories from ages 52–69, and then logistic regression to examine associations between these trajectories and self-rated health in the early 70s, net of socio-demographics, household resources and prior health. Findings Women prevail in groups characterized by a weak(er) attachment to the labour market and men, in groups signifying a strong(er) attachment. Men who downshifted from full-time to part-time work around age 65 were the least likely to report poor health in their early 70s.Women had the best health if they remained employed, either full-time or part-time. However, unlike men, they appeared to benefit most in health terms when part-time hours were part of a longer-term pattern. Conclusion While our study findings show that continuing to work in later life may be positively associated with health, they also suggest the need for flexible employment policies that foster opportunities to work part-time.

Financial Education Program for Early Childhood Education

Educators, school reformers, and others even consider financial education as one of the 21st century skills that should be taught and instilled among students. Learning theories such as cognitive learning theory by Jean Piaget, discovery learning of Jerome Bruner, and social learning theory of Albert Bandura can all be utilized to promote financial education in early childhood. Teaching financial education in schools starts the process of preparing children to become competent consumers and managers of household wealth. Moreover, the school system provides an effective way to reach children and teach them about personal finance. Children need more specific skills, attitudes, and fundamental knowledge about financial literacy now more than ever, because of changes in employment patterns, retrenchments, and the high unemployment rate in several countries. Still others point to the need for developing a feasible, efficient, and effective financial education program that could arrest the pressing need to raise the financial education of children.

Structural change and wife abuse: A disaggregated study of mineral mining and domestic violence in sub-Saharan Africa, 1999–2013

Mineral mining may be a mixed blessing for local communities. On the one hand, extractive industries can be a positive economic driver, generating considerable revenues, and opportunities for growth. On the other hand, mining is often thought to be associated with negative effects, such as pollution, and violent conflict. Existing research has shown that mine openings trigger a structural change in employment patterns in Africa, whereby women shift from agricultural work to the service sector, or leave the labor force. However, few if any systematic studies have addressed whether this structural shift may impact the level of violence within the household. Drawing on various versions of resource theory, we argue that mining – through such structural change – may increase women's risk of being abused by their partners. Recent advances in the literature on domestic violence (DV) suggest that prevailing gender norms moderate effects of resources. We test this empirically by matching georeferenced data on openings and closings of 147 industrial mines to individual data on abuse for up to 142,749 women from the Demographic and Health Surveys in 15 sub-Saharan African countries. We find no overall statistically significant effect of mine openings on the risk of partner abuse, although there are heterogeneous effects across countries. Furthermore, mining is associated with increased DV in areas with higher general acceptance of such abuse.

The Forgotten Strike: Equality, Gender, and Class in the Trico Equal Pay Strike

This article explores the events and issues of narrative and political identity surrounding the relatively unconsidered Trico equal pay strike, which took place over twenty-one weeks in the summer of 1976. It begins by reflecting on how the strike has been framed as either an addendum to the more celebrated Grunwick dispute or ignored altogether in existing historiography. Thereafter, it situates the strike in the context of women’s changing employment patterns and increased trade unionism in post-war Britain and discusses why the strike has received less academic coverage than similar disputes from the period, such as the Ford sewing-machinists’ strike and the Grunwick dispute. Using a range of media coverage and oral histories, it contrasts this with the importance of the strike to participants and the feminist, socialist, and national media. It outlines the distinction between feminist and labour interpretations of its meaning and purpose before finally analysing these interpretations against the perspectives of the strikers. It concludes by arguing that whilst the strike was afforded greater significance by the feminist press and women’s movement, the women primarily constructed their identities around class and trade unionism, and asks what this means for our understanding of women’s political identities in post-war Britain.

Μ εταμορφώσεις της εργασίας και της απασχόλησης και εξελίξεις στο πεδίο της κοινωνιολογίας της εργασίας

The early sociology of work was synonymous with industrial sociology, as the focus of analysis was industrial work and the industrial worker. In recent years, there is a growing debate in relation to its future; namely its relation with other with adjacent sociological fields, the possibility of attracting a scientific elite, its place within a society where the role of work is being questioned. The paper underlines that sociology of work has displayed an ability to adapt to the changing employment patterns. The paper supports that the modern sociology of work should therefore be considered as an inhomogeneous scientific field, reflecting the constant changes taking place in work and employment.

Rural labour employment and their livelihoods in Bihar: Micro-level evidences from selected villages

This study examines the changing employment and livelihood patterns of rural labour households in Bihar. The study is based on the high-frequency panel data being collected under the ICAR-ICRISAT project on Village Dynamics Studies in eastern India. The findings of the study indicate that there has been a decline in the proportion of labour households in the total number of rural households, but the transition of the labour force from the farm to the non-farm sector is clearly evident. However, the number of land-owning households among the labour households has increased. The study shows that employment opportunities for males in both the farm and non-farm sectors have increased with a higher magnitude in the non-farm sector than in the farm sector. By contrast, women’s employment in the farm sector has declined, though their employment in the non-farm sector has increased. Both the farm and non-farm sectors have witnessed an increase in the wages of labourers during the past four years, but the increase has been much higher in the non-farm sector (65 %) than in the farm sector (15 %). The study further indicates that male labourers are employed at higher wages than women labourers in both the farm and non-farm sectors. The wage determinant analysis reveals that a healthy, educated and land-owning adult male labourer is likely to get higher wages than others. The study also shows that labour households face several constraints and their access to institutional credit is abysmally low in Bihar. They primarily depend on non-institutional sources for meeting their credit needs. It has been observed that about one-third of the labour households borrow mainly to meet consumption and medical expenses. Various programmes for the welfare and development of the weaker sections are being implemented by different government departments. However, the erstwhile flagship development schemes such as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), Indira Awas Yojana (IAY), Kisan Credit Card (KCC) and Self-help Group (SHG) schemes have virtually ceased to operate in the villages under study. Hence, there is a need to revive these projects by laying greater emphasis on the upliftment of the weaker sections of society.

Gender and labour in times of austerity: Ireland, Italy and Portugal in comparative perspective

AbstractUsing Eurostat data for 2007, 2010 and 2012, the authors examine the effects of the 2008 crisis on the situation of male and female workers in Italy, Ireland and Portugal, with particular attention to changing labour market dynamics, (intra‐household) employment patterns, and incomes. The gender gaps in employment, unemployment and precarious employment are narrowing, but this trend cannot be interpreted as progress toward gender equality: it is driven by men's increasingly vulnerable position resulting from the generalized deterioration of labour market conditions, including the growth of precarious and/or low‐paid employment, unemployment and poverty to the detriment of household living standards.

We Intend to Move Together

The story of women's participation in the ecumenical movement can indeed be described as a pilgrimage of justice and peace, as well as a story of mission. From the earliest days of ecumenism--whether in its formal, institutional structures or in the lively work and witness of local communities around the globe--questions about women's role in the churches have been intertwined with questions about the social, economic, and cultural forces that affect women's lives. With changing emphasis shaped by particular time and context, the consistent thread in the journey has been a will to respond to the call to participate in God's mission in the world in ways that contribute to wholeness and fullness of life for all God's people and to the flourishing of creation. While not always named or recognized as such, gender justice has been at the heart of this journey. Consistently, women have been seeking ecumenical space in which the diverse experiences of women, their voices and visions, and the conditions of injustice and oppression that have been the lot of many women around the world can be lifted up and addressed. And in that space, women have claimed their own agency of resistance and transformation. The story of women's work and witness in the World Council of Churches (WCC) is only one facet of this journey. Each church family and world communion could tell its own story and each local context has had times of ecumenical witness and action--often connected with global programs, but also representative of particular local needs and issues. Nevertheless, the WCC has played a key role since its inception in linking ecumenical women in local contexts with international networks and global currents. A review of WCC programmes and structures committed to the journey of gender justice reveals both the rich heritage of ecumenical women's work and the challenges and gaps that continue. Affirming the "service and status of women" In the 1940s, when the WCC was still in the process of formation, Twila Cavert, a Young Women Christian Association (YWCA) leader from the US, together with other women, gained the support of WCC leaders for a pre-assembly women's meeting and a survey of woman leaders worldwide about their vision for the work of women in the whole church. (1) The questionnaire netted detailed replies from women in 58 countries, and prompted the Reformed Church of France to request that the question of women's role be placed on the agenda of the first assembly in Amsterdam in 1948. There, the study report on "The Life and Work of Women in the Church" was received and its recommendation for a permanent commission to undertake ecumenical inquiry into issues related to women's ministry was accepted. Susannah Herzel writes of the significance of these first steps for the participation of women in churches around the world: "So the infiltration had begun. Member churches of the ecumenical movement had agents of change in their midst, and the troubling questions would be increasingly difficult to ignore." (2) The material generated by the study was developed into a book by Kathleen Bliss, published in 1952 as The Service and Status of Women in the Churches, (3) Interpreting the reports through the framework of women's various types of service--voluntary, full-time and professional, ordained, and participation in church governance--Bliss examined the contributions and limitations of each area of endeavour. She asked whether the churches were making the best use of women's gifts, or helping women to participate as Christians in the changes taking place in society as a whole. Writing during a period of flux in women's public and private roles, Bliss urged churches to recognize the implications of changing family and employment patterns. She asserted that "what is needed is ... an imaginative act of understanding ... [of the] ... revolutionary change in the place of women in society." (4) These reports from around the world provided evidence that responses to women's ministries ranged from indifference to active opposition. …