Decline In Employment Research Articles

Explaining Refugee Employment Declines: Structural Shortcomings in Federal Resettlement Support

Abstract In the United States, the integration experiences of immigrants depend partly on whether they are recognized as refugees or economic migrants. Unlike economic migrants, refugees receive federal resources to help find employment, raising important questions about the role of such government support in migrants’ labor market integration. Our analysis of nationally representative data from the New Immigrant Survey shows that despite early access to government-funded employment services, refugees actually experience employment declines the longer they live in the United States. Drawing on 61 interviews with resettlement experts in refugee-serving organizations across the country, we highlight three interrelated structural weaknesses in the federal refugee resettlement process that help account for these employment declines: (1) retrenched resettlement funding, (2) a logic of self-sufficiency prioritizing rapid employment in generally undesirable and unstable jobs, and (3) siloed networks of refugee-serving organizations. Our findings have important implications for immigrant integration, the welfare state, and the ways that nonprofit organizations shape inequality.

The evaluation of the competitive potential and performance of the agricultural sector in the EU countries based on a synthetic index

Purpose – This paper presents the results of an assessment of the aggregated competitiveness of the agricultural sector in the EU member states. The authors sought answers to the following questions: What is the general level of competitiveness of the agricultural sector in the European Union? Which countries are leaders in the EU and which are outsiders in this area? Research method – The analyses were based on a set of intentionally selected multi-criteria indicators and taxonomic methods. An aggregated Competitiveness Index (CI) was designed, which allowed evaluating and classifying EU countries into categories in terms of the studied phenomenon. The analysis draws upon data derived from the World Bank’s and Eurostat statistical databases, and the assessment covered two years – 2004 and 2018. Results – The mean CI in 2018 for all the evaluated countries was 0.1701, while in the base year it was 0.1942, which means that in the analysed years the general competitiveness level of agricultural sectors in the EU member states declined. Considering the possible range of CI (0.1), this level was very low in both analysed years. The general competitiveness level fell due to: the reduced use of fertilisers, decrease in the relative export orientation, smaller area of arable land and a decline in employment in agriculture. Originality/value/implications/recommendations – The analysis of the agricultural sector presented in this paper, using a comprehensive index, is the approach that has not been previously applied, taking into account the selection of the components of a comprehensive index, which was made on the basis of the literature studies. The proposed index allowed classifying the countries of the European Union according to both their resources and performance in production and trade in the agricultural sector and comparing the position they occupied in 2004 and in 2018.

Declining Worker Turnover: The Role of Short-Duration Employment Spells

Using the Quarterly Workforce Indicators database, we document that a significant amount of the decline in labor market turnover during the last two decades is accounted for by the decline in employment spells that last just one or two quarters. This phenomenon is pervasive: short-term employment spells have declined across industries, firm size categories, demographic groups, and geographic regions. Using a search-and-matching model in the Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides tradition that incorporates noisy signals about the quality of a worker-firm match, we argue that improved screening by workers and firms can account for much of the decline in short-lived employment spells. (JEL E24, J23, J41, J63, M51)

Household Leverage and the Recession

We evaluate and partially challenge the household leverage view of the Great Recession. In the data, employment and consumption declined more in U.S. states where household debt declined more. We study a model of a monetary union composed of many regions in which liquidity constraints shape the response of employment and consumption to changes in debt. We estimate the model with Bayesian methods combining state and aggregate data. Changes in household credit explain 40% of the differential rise and fall of employment across states, but a small fraction of the aggregate employment decline in 2007–2010. Nevertheless, since household deleveraging was gradual, credit shocks greatly slowed the recovery.

The Geography of Demilitarisation: Do Regional Economic Disparities Affect the Spatial Distribution of Military Base Closures?

Abstract Very few researchers have focused on the question of: if and to what extent, regional economic disparities affect military base closures. In this paper, we aim to explain regional patterns of military base closures in the Czech Republic, a country that has experienced a sharp decline in military employment and expenditures since the beginning of 1990s. Three groups of predictors of closure were considered: local (size, age, location and hierarchical position of the military base); regional (wages, unemployment, city size, the initial level of militarisation of the district); and national-level predictors (geostrategic priorities and restructuring of the Czech Armed Forces). Our research is informed by the theory of public choice and its application to the decision-making processes concerning military base closures and realignments. We employed a combination of regression models to determine which group of the above-mentioned factors affected the spatial distribution of military bases in the period 1994–2005. While geostrategic factors (such as distance from the border with West Germany) and restructuring of the army (type of a military base) were the most important, regional economic disparities showed no significant correlation with the intensity of military base closures/downsizing. We did not demonstrate that military bases in economically lagging regions had been systematically protected in the Czech Republic.

Employment policy in the COVID-19

The paper analyses the macroeconomic situation in the labor market and proposes measures to restore employment to the pre-COVID -19 level. The study of the basic concepts of state regulation methods of employment demonstrates that various forms of their application are used on the country’s macroeconomic level. In developing countries long-term COVID-19 related restrictive measures result in the dramatic decline of economic activity, contraction of production, unemployment rise, drop in labor productivity. The countries with high macroeconomic indicators have better social cohesion and reliable systems of social protection. This has consequences that are more reliable on the employment level compared to the developing countries. Assessment of various policy approaches of full lockdown measures for localization of disease dissemination, imposition of restrictions on the working life, introduction of new remote forms of work and education, force countries to define special policy, which depends on the national economic and financial potential. Health system development and adoption of stabilizing measures of the epidemic situation in the country form the basis to restore confidence and trust in the society. The article proposes a deep account of the challenges that the Ukrainian economy has faced and continues to face due to the COVID-19 pandemic effects, deterioration of macroeconomic indicators, including employment decline. The application of the “adaptive quarantine measures” in the regions demonstrates adequate consequences for business SME's development. The estimation results depict the tendencies of increasing unemployment, inflation, and a decreasing population’s ability to pay and lowering business activity in certain sectors of the economy. Numerous forms related to the support and professional development of the unemployed population are proposed.

Are Paraprofessionals Being Hired to Replace Special Educators? A Study of Paraprofessional Employment

Special education teacher employment began to decline in 2006, concurrent with increased paraprofessional employment. At the same time, the prevalence of students with disabilities in several categories changed substantially, and the proportion of students being served in general education settings increased as well. The purpose of this study was to determine whether the decline in special education teacher employment was related to increased paraprofessional employment, and if the increase in paraprofessional employment was related to shifts in the composition of students with disabilities, educational placements, or more general state-level factors. We created a panel dataset for 2006–2015 and analyzed these relationships using a two-way fixed effects model. We found that, although changes in paraprofessional employment were unrelated to changes in special educator employment, they were related to changes in the prevalence of students with autism spectrum disorder. In addition, states with larger populations and higher K12 expenditures employed more paraprofessionals.

The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Macroeconomic Aggregates of the European Union

Abstract Economic experts’ predictions of a slowdown in the EU’s global economy and economic growth in the year 2020 were based on various risks and uncertainties existing on a world scale, ranging from the US-China trade war, traditionally strained relations of the EU and the US on the one hand and the Russian Federation on the other, all the way to BREXIT and economic migration to developed EU countries. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has further aggravated those forecasts, so that the entire EU is recording a historic decline in all macroeconomic aggregates. The beginning of the pandemic in the EU was accompanied by the complete border lockdown of the entire Union, which greatly affected the economies of the member states. The EU is experiencing a decline of both real and nominal GDP, declining incomes, employment decline and unemployment increase. This paper will investigate the impact of COVID-19 onto GDP, unemployment, and EU public debt. Correlation-regression analysis confirms the positive correlation between these variables and the economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to the economic crisis, a crisis of EU health systems, which requires huge economic investments. A more prominent economic recovery is hard to expect until the global pandemic ends. One thing is for certain, this economic crisis will continue in 2021, whereby a more significant recovery is expected only in the year 2022. Certainly, it will take years to make up for the economic losses caused by the pandemic.

On the Persistence of the China Shock

We evaluate the duration of the China trade shock and its impact on a wide range of outcomes over the period 2000 to 2019. The shock plateaued in 2010, enabling analysis of its effects for nearly a decade past its culmination. Adverse impacts of import competition on manufacturing employment, overall employment-population ratios, and income per capita in more trade-exposed U.S. commuting zones are present out to 2019. Over the full study period, greater import competition implies a reduction in the manufacturing employment-population ratio of 1.54 percentage points, which is 55% of the observed change in the value, and the absorption of 86% of this net job loss via a corresponding decrease in the overall employment rate. Reductions in population headcounts, which indicate net out-migration, register only for foreign-born workers and the native-born 25-39 years old, implying that exit from work is a primary means of adjustment to trade-induced contractions in labor demand. More negatively affected regions see modest increases in the uptake of government transfers, but these transfers primarily take the form of Social Security and Medicare benefits. Adverse outcomes are more acute in regions that initially had fewer college-educated workers and were more industrially specialized. Impacts are qualitatively-but not quantitatively-similar to those caused by the decline of employment in coal production since the 1980s, indicating that the China trade shock holds lessons for other episodes of localized job loss. Import competition from China induced changes in income per capita across local labor markets that are much larger than the spatial heterogeneity of income effects predicted by standard quantitative trade models. Even using higher-end estimates of the consumer benefits of rising trade with China, a substantial fraction of commuting zones appears to have suffered absolute declines in average real incomes.

Labor migration in Russia during the coronavirus pandemic

The introduction of quarantine measures in connection with the coronavirus pandemic was accompanied by the blocking of cross-border communications and the restriction of the activities of enterprises in most sectors of the economy. Labor migrants and members of their families staying on the territory of Russia found themselves in a difficult situation. The decline in employment, primarily in those areas where migrants work, has made foreign citizens one of the most vulnerable social groups. The first layer of issues considered in the article is associated with an assessment of the situation in which migrants have found themselves in Russia. In what types of economic activity has the decline in employment become particularly painful for migrants? What is their financial situation? To what extent are they ready to leave Russia if transport communications are restored? What are their immediate and long-term plans related to work and life in Russia? The second focus of the study is on potential migrants who were unable to enter Russia after the severance of international transport links. What is their economic situation at home? How quickly are they going to leave for Russia if restrictions on international travel are lifted? What are their short-term and long-term plans related to their stay in Russia? This article is devoted to finding answers to these questions, based on an online survey of 2,695 foreign citizens (including 1,304 migrants located in Russia and 1,391 abroad), as well as a telephone survey of 300 labor migrants in the Moscow metropolis conducted in the first half of June 2020.

Changing livelihoods at India’s rural–urban transition

• India is experiencing a major employment shift out of agriculture, affecting the livelihoods of millions of people. • This shift parallels substantial urban growth in hitherto rural regions but with few new local livelihood opportunities. • Labor migration is an important alternative, with traditional seasonal migration replaced by permanent circular migration. • Domestic migration is disproportionately undertaken by poor households; those with international migrants do much better. • A strong pro-active policy stance is needed to simultaneously stimulate local livelihoods and facilitate labor migration. In India, the past couple of decades witnessed, simultaneously, a massive shift of employment out of agriculture, substantial urban growth in heretofore rural regions, and rapid increases in the rates of labor migration. But very little is known about new livelihoods being forged or the whereabouts of these livelihoods. We draw on extensive primary data collected at two sites in West Bengal and Bihar, along with a comprehensive analysis of population census and GIS data, to investigate livelihood transformations and household well-being. We observe large-scale change, exceeding common perceptions of academics and policy makers. While the shift out of agriculture is momentous, alternative local livelihoods are scarce and, more than ever, labor migration offers a way out for many households. Traditional seasonal migration has made way for more permanent forms of circular labor migration. Our comparative study shows that the timing and nature of this transformation varies to some extent across India as the decline in agricultural employment occurred at different times. We also observe significantly different impacts of domestic versus international labor migration. There is a pressing need for pro-active government policies that stimulate local economic restructuring and livelihood opportunities and , as long as these local economies are insufficiently developed, that facilitate circular labor migration.

The Impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) on Energy Poverty and Unemployment in Selected European Union Countries

The accelerated development of information and communication technologies (ICT) over the last three decades has encouraged researchers to analyse the impact of this phenomenon on the labour market. The potential decline in employment resulting from the proliferation of ICT may reduce access to basic energy services and even lead to energy poverty in the form of inability to heat the apartment as needed, allocating a significant part of revenues to expenses related to heating or problems with the timely payment of energy bills. Because access to energy is of fundamental importance for improving the quality of life and is crucial from the point of view of economic development, it is justified to verify the hypothesis that the accelerated development of ICT in EU countries may contribute to an increase in unemployment and, consequently, translate into a higher level of energy poverty. The described research results were obtained thanks to a comparative factor analysis based on secondary data. The analysis showed that in the period 2009–2019, the use of ICT had a limited impact on the unemployment rate in the EU and had a significant impact on reducing the level of energy poverty in EU Member States. As regards the impact of ICT factors on the level of energy poverty, only IP traffic showed a significant impact in this area. When it comes to the labour market, it was found that employment is chiefly influenced by economic factors such as labour costs.

Estimating Hysteresis Effects

<ns3:p>In this paper we identify demand shocks that can have a permanent effect on output through hysteresis effects. We call these shocks permanent demand shocks. They are found to be quantitatively important in the United States, in particular when the Great Recession is included in the sample. Recessions driven by permanent demand shocks lead to a permanent decline in employment and investment, while output per worker is largely unaffected. We find strong evidence that hysteresis transmits through a rise in long-term unemployment and a decline in labor force participation and disproportionately affects the least productive workers.</ns3:p>

Schools of Economic Thought and Problems of Sustainable Development: Analysis of Theoretical Approaches of Government Regulation Supporters

Aim. The presented study aims to analyze approaches to achieving sustainable development proposed by schools focused on strengthening government intervention in economic processes to achieve sustainability.Tasks. The authors examine publications that address the problems of sustainable development by the representatives of post-Keynesianism, green Keynesianism, and environmental economists; determine the main goals of sustainable development outlined by the representatives of the aforementioned schools and identify the tools they offer to achieve sustainability; assess the possibility of using these tools in the real sector of the economy, identifying their strengths and weaknesses.Methods. This study uses the methods of analysis and synthesis as well as comparative-historical and problem-chronological methods.Results. It is found that the examined schools focus on the problems of preserving ecosystems and ensuring sustainable economic growth. Other goals, such as provision of employment opportunities, elimination of poverty and inequality are considered to a lesser extent as resulting from the measures taken by the government for the purpose of the environmental transformation of the economy. It is proposed to introduce various forms of assessment and payment for the use of natural resources and to transfer the flow of investment from resource-oriented towards environmentally oriented industries. The decline in employment associated with such a reorientation can be compensated for by expanding employment in the service sector, reducing working hours, and lowering the retirement age.Conclusions. Measures of transition towards sustainable development proposed by post-Keynesians, green Keynesians, and environmental economists are mainly based on non-market measures and imply the strengthening of the government’s influence. Some measures, such as increasing taxes on the products of “dirty” industries, are reflected in the economic policies of other countries. Other measures, primarily aimed at eliminating poverty, inequality, and unemployment, are not being actively implemented. It should be noted that not all recipes of theorists can be applied in the real sector since they include radical measures, the practical implementation of which can lead to economic collapse and a decrease in the population’s living standards.

The K-Shaped Recovery: Examining the Diverging Fortunes of Workers in the Recovery from the COVID-19 Pandemic Using Business and Household Survey Microdata.

This paper examines employment patterns by wage group over the course of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States using microdata from two well-known data sources from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: the Current Employment Statistics and the Current Population Survey. We find establishments paying the lowest average wages and the lowest wage workers had the steepest decline in employment and experienced the most persistent losses. We disentangle the extent to which the effect observed for low wage workers is due to these workers being concentrated within a few low wage sectors of the economy versus the pandemic affecting low wage workers in a number of sectors across the economy. Our results indicate that the experience of low wage workers is not entirely due to these workers being concentrated in low wage sectors — for many sectors, the lowest wage quintiles in that sector also has had the worst employment outcomes. From April 2020 to May 2021, between 23% and 46% of the decline in employment among the lowest wage establishments was due to within-industry changes. Another important finding is that even for those who remain employed during the pandemic, the probability of becoming part-time for economic reasons increased, especially for low-wage workers.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10888-021-09506-6.

Bank Concentration and Local Labor Markets

I use a quasi-experimental design supplied by bank anti-trust policy to inspect how bank concentration impacts local labor market outcomes. The regulator applies a cutoff rule when dealing with bank mergers such that markets directly below this regulatory cutoff see an increase in bank concentration, while ones directly above this cutoff do not. Markets that are just below the cutoff see an increase in their deposit-HHI as well as a decrease in their small business lending. A rise in county-level deposit-HHI of 142 points leads to a rise in the county's unemployment rate of 0.284 percentage points, a decline in employment of 0.5 percent, and a decline in average wages of 1 percent. The decline in employment is concentrated in tradable and bank dependent industries, suggesting that the employment effect is due to lower small business lending by banks. These employment effects are also concentrated in black neighborhoods, which also see a larger small business lending and entrepreneurship declines relative to other areas in the markets that receive the positive concentration shock. This paper is the first to show that local labor market conditions respond to changes in local bank concentration, and also that lower small business lending and entrepreneurship in black areas lead to disproportionately larger negative employment effects for these areas.

Torn Apart? The Impact of Manufacturing Employment Decline on Black and White Americans

Abstract This paper examines the impact of manufacturing employment decline on the socioeconomic outcomes within and between black and white americans since 1960. The analysis shows that manufacturing decline had a negative impact on blacks in terms of their wages, employment, marriage rates, house values, poverty rates, death rates, single parenthood, teen motherhood, child poverty, and child mortality. In addition, the decline in manufacturing increased inequality within the black community for wages and other outcomes. Similar patterns are found for whites, but to a lesser degree—leading to larger gaps between whites and blacks in wages, marriage patterns, poverty, single-parenthood, and death rates.

Firing Costs and Decoupling of Technological Invention and Post-invention Investments

We show that employment protection laws, which increase firing costs, decouple invention and post-invention investment by reducing the coordination benefits of collocation. The decoupling played a significant role in US employment decline and jobless growth, the vertical and geographical disintegration of firm activities, and underinvestment relative to Tobin’s Q. Technological inventions lead to employment growth, but employment protection laws almost fully negate this positive effect, especially in fast-changing and high-offshore industries and for radical inventions. We find limited effects on firm revenue and profits, as firms bypass increased firing costs through capital substitution and increased JV and alliance activities, driven in part by collaborations with foreign partners. Our findings suggest labor market flexibility as a critical link between invention and firm growth dynamics and question the efficacy of technology-led revival of the US manufacturing employment without the accompanying labor market reforms.

Quarantine, Contact Tracing, and Testing: Implications of an Augmented SEIR Model

Abstract I incorporate quarantine, contact tracing, and random testing in the basic SEIR model of infectious disease diffusion. A version of the model that is calibrated to known characteristics of the spread of COVID-19 is used to estimate the transmission rate of COVID-19 in the United States in 2020. The transmission rate is then decomposed into a part that reflects observable changes in employment and social contacts, and a residual component that reflects disease properties and all other factors that affect the spread of the disease. I then construct counterfactuals for an alternative employment path that avoids the sharp employment decline in the second quarter of 2020, but also results in higher cumulative deaths due to a higher contact rate. For the simulations a modest permanent increase of quarantine effectiveness counteracts the increase in deaths, and the introduction of contact tracing and random testing further reduces deaths, although at a diminishing rate. Using a conservative assumption on the statistical value of life, the value of improved health outcomes from the alternative policies far outweighs the economic gains in terms of increased output and the potential fiscal costs of these policies.

Wielowymiarowa analiza porównawcza rynku pracy w Stanach Zjednoczonych w czasie oddziaływania pandemii COVID-19 i jego wpływ na zapewnienie wsparcia logistycznego SZ USA stacjonujących w Polsce

The study uses a multidimensional comparative analysis of the employed and unemployed in respective US states in four groups of dependent variables in the form of months: January 2020, November 2020, December 2020, January 2021 and its impact on providing logistical support to the US Armed Forces stationed in Poland . The research period of the study covers the impact of the crisis caused by the COVID-19 infectious disease pandemic. It led to a sharp increase in unemployment in April 2020. Such a strong and rapid growth dynamics of unemployment rates in the United States has not yet been recorded in history. An analysis conducted by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates serious damage to the US labor market as a result of the COVID-19 infectious disease. At the end of November 2020 there were 9.8 million fewer people employed than in February (excluding agricultural work which is of a seasonal nature) [https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/12/covid19-pandemic-usa- employment-inequality /, status on 03/27/2021]. In 2020, the US national unemployment rate was at 3.6% in January and reached a record 14.7% in April. It has dropped dramatically since then, to around 6.7% in November, but the recovery has been uneven for women and black people, Latinos and young people - still experiencing high levels of unemployment. Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of long-term unemployed has been growing steadily [https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/dec/31/us-unemployment-december-coronavirus as of 03/27/2021]. An analysis of government data from the Pew Research Center shows that job losses during the pandemic hit workers in low-wage jobs particularly hard [https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/02/10/unemployed -americans-are-feeling-the-emotional-strain-of-job-loss-most-have-considered-changing-occupations /, as of 27/03/2021]. From December 2019 to December 2020, the percentage decline in employment in low-wage occupations was more than twice as high as in occupations with average wages (-12.5% vs. -5.3%) while employment in high-wage occupations slightly increased in this period [https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/02/10/unemployed-americans-are-feeling-the-emotional-strain-of-job-loss-most-have-considered-changing- occupations /, as of 27/03/2021]. An estimated 20 million people have lost their jobs in the United States. The data was downloaded from the website: https://www.bls.gov/ to conduct the research. They were grouped, inferred and ranked. The last stage of the research was the calculation of unemployment rates in four groups of dependent variables and outlining a bar chart by applying the ranking with the use of the median in four groups of observed variables.