Employment Gap Research Articles

Labor Market Frictions and Lowest Low Fertility

The total fertility rate is well below its replacement level of 2.1 children in high- income countries. Why do women choose such low fertility levels? We study how labor market frictions affect the fertility of college-educated women. We focus on two frictions: uncertainty created by dual labor markets (the coexistence of jobs with temporary and open-ended contracts) and inflexibility of work schedules. Using rich administrative data from the Spanish Social Security records, we show that women are less likely to be promoted to permanent jobs than men. Temporary contracts are also associated with a lower probability of first birth. With Time Use data, we also show that women with children are less likely to work in jobs with split-shift schedules, which come with a fixed time cost. We then build a life-cycle model in which married women decide whether to work or not, how many children to have, and when to have them. In the model, women face a trade-off between having children early and waiting and building their careers. We show that reforms that reduce the labor market duality and eliminate split-shift schedules increase the completed fertility of college-educated from 1.52 to 1.88. These reforms enable women to have more children and have them early in their life-cycle. They also increase the labor force participation of women and eliminate the employment gap between mothers and non-mothers.

Countercyclical Fiscal Policy and Gender Employment: Evidence from the G-7 Countries

Would countercyclical fiscal policy during recessions improve or worsen the gender employment gap? We give an answer to this question by exploring the state-dependent impact of fiscal spending shocks on employment by gender in the G-7 countries. Using the local projection method, we find that, during recessions, a positive spending shock of 1 percent of GDP would, on average, lift female employment by 1 percent, while increasing male employment by 0.6 percent. Consequently such a shock would improve the female share of employment by 0.28 percentage point during recessions. Our findings are driven by disproportionate employment changes in female-friendly industries, occupations, and part-time jobs in response to fiscal spending shocks. The analysis suggests that fiscal stimulus, particularly during recessions, could achieve the twin objectives of supporting aggregate demand and improving gender gaps.

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.

Application of psychosocial strengths to predict employment satisfaction

BACKGROUND: There is a continual need to decrease the employment gap between people with and without disabilities. Psychological Capital (PsyCap) and happiness have shown strong relationships with employment and offer a promising avenue to desirable

Preferences or Patriarchy: Why Do Religious Women Work Less?

Do religious women work less because they want to? To address this question, we consider whether the gender employment gap for six world religions can be explained by the gender gap in the employment happiness premium, defined as the happiness gain associated with being employed. We find that preferences plausibly explain the gender employment gap for Buddhists, Orthodox Christians, and the non-religious. In contrast, they explain less than half the gender employment gap for Hindus, Muslims, Catholics and Protestants. Our findings are consistent with a significant role for patriarchal social norms in constraining female employment in these four religious traditions.

The role of employment interruptions and part-time work for the rise in wage inequality

The incidence of employment interruptions and temporary part-time work has grown strongly among full-time workers, yet little is known about the impact on wage inequality. This is the first study showing that such episodes play a substantial role for the rise in inequality of full-time wages, considering the case of Germany. While there are also strong composition effects of education for males and of age and experience for females, changes in industry and occupation explain fairly little of the inequality rise. Extending the analysis to total employment reveals substantial negative selection into part-time work.JEL-Classification: J31, J20, J60

Effective policy in reform in tackling the disability employment gap

Effective policy in reform in tackling the disability employment gap

Effective policy in reform in tackling the disability employment gap

Effective policy in reform in tackling the disability employment gap

스포츠산업의 미래 고용시장 예측을 통한 직무수립에 관한 연구

The purpose of this study is to define and establish descriptions by analyzing prospective job market in sports industry. To achieve that, this researcher chose 16 experts on sports education and employment as study participants, and designed a semi-structured questionnaire in reference to sports marketing literature, NCS classification and organization in order for data collection. For data processing, SWOT analysis, graphs based on mean value, multiple response analysis, and cross-tabulation analysis were conducted. As a result, first, in line with the overall situations of the sports industry, a total of 16 strategies (four strategies in each one of SO, ST, WO, and WT) were drawn. Secondly, in the whole labor market, unemployment rate and youth employment rate were predicted to increase, and activity rate and employment rate were predicated to decrease. In the sports labor market, average service years, temporary job rate, annual total of labor market, employment gap between men and women, and wage disparity between men and women were predicted to increase, whereas part-time workers, annual total of wage, wage per hour, organizational rate of labor union, organizational rate of collective agreement, corporate expenses for social welfare, the number of foreign employees, and average level of education were predicted to decrease. Third, the sports sector that is expected to add more jobs in the future include sports medical service, leisure sports travel, public sports facilities, leisure and sports instructions, and distribution of sports goods, and key tasks are found to include production of virtual reality contents, welfare services, and sports facilities.

Implications of Religion, Culture, and Legislation for Gender Equality at Work: Qualitative Insights from Jordan

With a view to consolidating the existing theory development and stimulating new conceptual thinking, this paper explores the implications of culture, religion (Islam), and the legal framework on women’s employment and their limited advancement in the hospitality industry, one of the important elements of the economy in Jordan. A related aim is to contrast the egalitarian Islamic approach to gender equality with gender discriminatory tribal traditions that restrict women’s employment and progression. Guided by religion, culture, and gender literature, this study uses a qualitative, content-based analysis. Drawing on open-ended questionnaires distributed to a diverse workforce across four tourist locations in Jordan, the results portray how tribalism and Bedouin customs embedded in the participants’ interpretation and practices of their religion (along with the existing legal framework) are maintaining gender gaps in employment and positions of power. The results also reveal that despite the Islamic guidelines towards fairness and justice (haqq and adl) in employment, the tribal and Bedouin traditions restrict women’s employment through patriarchal interpretations of Islam. Thus, the salient novelty and significance of this study were achieved through contributing to the theory development of the interrelations between religion, culture, and gender equality.

Self-assessed vs. statistical evidence of racial discrimination: the case of indigenous Australians

ABSTRACTThis paper provides new insights on the labour market discrimination faced by indigenous Australians one of the most disadvantaged indigenous populations in developed countries. Combining two large, nationally representative datasets, we decompose the employment gap between indigenous and non-indigenous populations as of 2014–2015, and show that differences in characteristics between the two groups account for only 43% of the employment gap for females, and 23% of the gap for males. We then demonstrate that statistical measures are positively related to discrimination reports of females and negatively related to discrimination reports of males. Our findings underscore the importance of improving transparency in employment processes for addressing the issue of disadvantage of racial minorities.

The Impact of Gender Inequality on Economic Performance in Developing Countries

Despite substantial progress, gender gaps persist in many developing countries. Since the 1990s, a literature has emerged arguing that these gaps not only are inequitable but also reduce economic performance. This review finds that, first, it is methodologically difficult to determine reliable effects of gender gaps on economic performance. Second, accounting studies that calculate how much larger GDP would be if gender gaps in employment disappeared vastly overestimate likely effects. Third, the theoretical literature has generated important insights on mechanisms linking gender gaps to economic performance. Fourth, systematic reviews of the cross-country evidence robustly show that lowering gender gaps in education leads to higher economic performance, while the literature on the impact of other gaps is much more limited. Fifth, there is accumulating micro evidence on how reducing particular gender gaps at the level of households, farms, or firms can improve economic performance in particular contexts, with robust results in some areas, and less clear evidence in others.

Rejuvenating Japanese Economy through Closing Gender Employment gap

Rejuvenating Japanese Economy through Closing Gender Employment gap

Trends in Black–White Employment Gaps Since the Great Recession

The Great Recession had a devastating impact on labor force participation and employment. This impact was not unlike other recessions, except in size. The recovery, however, has been unusual not so much for its sluggishness but for the unusual pattern of recovery in employment by race. The Black employment–population rate has increased since bottoming out in 2010 while the White employment–population rate has remained flat. We examine trends in labor force participation and employment by race, sex, and age and determine that the explanation is a combination of an aging White population and an increase in labor force participation among younger Black people. We estimate the likelihood of labor force participation and employment among young men and women to control for confounding factors, such as changes in educational characteristics. We then decompose the gaps among groups and the changes over time in labor force participation using an Oaxaca–Blinder-like technique for nonlinear estimations. We find that much smaller negative impacts of characteristics and greater returns to characteristics among young Black men and women than among young White men and women explain the observed trends.

INFLATION TARGETING, CREDIT FLOWS, AND FINANCIAL STABILITY IN A REGIME CHANGE MODEL

Recent papers point to the problem that inflation-targeting models do not as of yet consider financial market stability that can considerably derail inflation-targeting monetary policy, implying significant nonzero crisis probabilities that could come along with large negative output and employment gaps. Credit flows and the instability of credit appear to be at the root of the financial instability problem. On the other hand, some authors recently questioned whether a too early and too strong leaning against the wind policy by central banks might have higher costs than benefits in terms of output and employment losses. In our paper, we include in an inflation targeting model a financial stabilization goal. In contrast to infinite horizon and two-period models, we propose a finite horizon model. The model is solved by using a new global solution algorithm, called Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC), exploring stabilizing/destabilizing effects of price and nonprice (credit volume) drivers of the output gap, inflation, and credit flows. We substantiate the theoretical part of the paper by approaching the subject empirically, relying to that end on a regime-switching structural vector autoregressive (VAR) for the euro area. The empirical model contains standard macroeconomic variables along with credit flows and loan interest rates, the central bank policy rate, and European Central Bank (ECB) balance sheet variables. The regime-switching feature of the model is meant to capture the state-dependent relationship between the variables, with specific nonlinearities having direct counterparts in the theoretical model. Based on a sign restriction methodology, we explore conventional and unconventional monetary policy shocks, loan supply, and demand shocks, under different regime assumptions to reveal the state-dependent effects of both interest rate and volume-based policies. The empirical results are used as guidance for the calibration of the theoretical model variants.

Employment Returns to Tertiary Education for Immigrants in Western Europe: Cross-Country Differences Before and After the Economic Crisis

This article contributes to the literature on the models of immigrants’ labour market incorporation in Western Europe by analysing the employment returns to tertiary education for both natives and immigrants. By using yearly EU-LFS data (2005–2013) for a selection of Western European countries, cross-country differences in the employment returns to tertiary education are analysed separately by immigrant status and gender. In Continental Europe, where immigrant-native employment gaps before the crisis were much larger than in Southern Europe, immigrants are found to benefit more from tertiary education, and their returns are also higher than for natives, while the opposite holds in Southern European countries. The same pattern is found irrespective of gender, but cross-country differences are more pronounced among women. The article also documents that the crisis contributed to a cross-country convergence, although limited to men, in the degree of immigrant employment disadvantage, which increased substantially in Southern Europe while remaining unchanged or slightly declining in all other countries. Nevertheless, although immigrant-native employment gaps grew as high as in Continental Europe, immigrant men in Southern Europe are still found to benefit from lower returns to tertiary education than their native counterparts.

The male immigrant–native employment gap in Sweden: migrant admission categories and human capital

Despite having a celebrated labor market integration policy, the immigrant–native employment gap in Sweden is one of the largest in the OECD. From a cross-country perspective, a key explanation might be migrant admission group composition. In this study we use high-quality detailed Swedish register data to estimate male employment gaps between non-EU/EES labour, family reunification and humanitarian migrants and natives. Moreover, we test if differences in human capital are able to explain rising employment integration heterogeneity. Our results indicate that employment integration is highly correlated with admission category. Interestingly, differences in human capital, demographic and contextual factors seem to explain only a small share of this correlation. Evidence from auxiliary regressions suggests that low transferability of human capital among humanitarian and family migrants might be part of the story. The article highlights the need to understand and account for migrant admission categories when studying employment integration.

How (not) to make women work?

Women in developed economies have experienced an unparalleled increase in employment rates, to the point that the gap with respect to men was cut in half. This positive trend has often been attributed to changes in the opportunity costs of working (e.g. access to caring facilities) and the opportunity costs of not-working (notably, relative growth in wages in positions more frequently occupied by women, improved educational attainment). Meanwhile, the gender employment gaps were stagnant in transition economies. Admittedly, employment equality among genders was initially much higher in transition countries.We exploit this unique evidence from transition and advanced countries, to analyze the relationship between the institutional environment and the (adjusted) gender employment gaps. We estimate comparable gender employment gaps on nearly 1500 micro databases from over 40 countries. Changes in both types of the opportunity costs exhibited strong correlation with gender employment equality where the gap was larger, i.e. advanced economies. We provide some evidence that these results are not explained away by transition-related phenomena. We argue that the observed divergence in time trends reflects a level effect: the lower the gender employment gap, the lower the strength of the relationship between gender employment equality and the opportunity costs of working. An implication from our study is that the existing instruments might be insufficient to further reduce the gender employment gap.

Parental leave length, social norms, and female labor market re-entry frictions

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to identify the role of employers in creating employment gaps among women returning to the labor market after parental leaves of different durations.Design/methodology/approachThe authors use a controlled correspondence field experiment that orthogonally manipulates parental leave length and the quality of fictitious female job candidates. The experiment is complemented with a survey among human resource managers.FindingsHigh-quality candidates receive more interview invitations when applying after a short parental leave, while low-quality (LQ) candidates receive more interview invitations when applying after a typical three years long parental leave. Survey results suggest that the difference in invitations between short and typical leave treatments is driven by a social norm that mothers should stay home with children younger than three. Productivity gains from employing a LQ job applicant with a shorter career break might not be high enough to outweigh the adverse social norm effect.Social implicationsThe presented results point toward the strong effect of prevailing social norms on job search prospects of women returning to the labor market after parental leave.Originality/valueA correspondence experiment has not been used before to study the relationship between time spent on leave and the labor market prospects of mothers. It also extends research on social norms to the domain of hiring decisions.

The emerging of employment gap in the Malaysian construction industry

Employment of young people is a big issue in the Malaysian construction industry. This is a common phenomenon not only in Malaysia but affected most developed and developing countries around the world. Sufficient workers are needed to cater to the robustness of the construction sector and to sustain the productivity that will boost the development demand. However, young people had difficulties to find decent employment in this industry due to lack of experience and skills among young people and some employer are more likely to hire foreign workers. The aim of this study is to examine the emerging of skill gaps in the Malaysian construction industry. The methodology adapted for this study comprise of primary and secondary data collection. The primary data had been collected from the questionnaire surveys on the professional within the construction industry. The data then were analyzed using the percentage score and the diagram such as bar chart had been used to visualize the results from the analysis. While, secondary data collected through literature review to gather information and important views from previous studies. The findings reveal that the construction industry prefer more than 30 years old skilled workers. Eventhough, the jobs could be filled by young people, but somehow, some barriers such as high risk, low wages, hard work and availability of foreign workers had distracted the involvement of young people in the construction industry.