Employment Gap Research Articles

Bounding the joint distribution of disability and employment with misclassification.

Understanding the relationship between disability and employment is critical and has long been the subject of study. However, estimating this relationship is difficult, particularly with survey data, since both disability and employment status are known to be misreported. Here, we use a partial identification approach to bound the joint distribution of disability and employment status in the presence of misclassification. Allowing for a modest amount of misclassification leads to bounds on the labor market status of the disabled that are not overly informative given the relative size of the disabled population. Thus, absent further assumptions, even a modest amount of misclassification creates much uncertainty about the employment gap between the non-disabled and disabled. However, additional assumptions considered are shown to have some identifying power. For example, under our most stringent assumptions, we find that the employment gap is at least 15.2% before the Great Recession and 22.0% afterward.

Assessing gender gaps in employment and earnings in Africa: The case of Eswatini

ABSTRACT Persistent gender gaps characterise labour markets in many African countries. Utilising Eswatini’s first three labour market surveys (conducted in 2007, 2010, and 2013), this paper provides first systematic evidence on the country’s gender gaps in employment and earnings. We find that women have notably lower employment rates and earnings than men, even though the global financial crisis had a less negative impact on women than it had on men. Both unadjusted and unexplained gender earnings gaps are higher in self-employment than in wage employment. Tertiary education and urban location account for a large part of the gender earnings gap and mitigate high female propensity to self-employment. Our findings suggest that policies supporting female higher education and rural-urban mobility could reduce persistent inequalities in Eswatini’s labour market outcomes as well as in other middle-income countries in southern Africa.

The impact of occupational structures on ethnic and gendered employment gaps: An event history analysis using social security register data.

Ethnic and gendered employment gaps are mainly explained by individual characteristics, while less attention is paid to occupational structures. Drawing on administrative data, this article analyses the impact of occupational characteristics on top of individual attributes in the urban labour market of Vienna. Both set of variables can explain observed employment gaps to a large extent, but persistent gaps remain, in particular among females. The article's main finding is that the occupational structure appears to have gendered effects. While men tend to benefit from ethnic segregation, women face difficulties when looking for jobs with high shares of immigrant workers. Looking for jobs in occupations that recruit from relatively few educational backgrounds (credentials) is beneficial for both sexes at the outset unemployment, but among females this competitive advantage diminishes over time. The article concludes by discussing potential strategies to avoid the traps of occupational segregation.

The disability employment gap in European countries: What is the role of labour market policy?

Across Europe, the labour market participation of persons with disabilities remains lower than that of persons without a disability. Our research examines this disability employment gap, looking specifically at its variation by country and gender. Additionally, we test the influence of labour market policies – testing both the social investment perspective and the welfare scepticism perspective – on the size of the gap, in an effort to determine whether a more generous welfare state raises or lowers the employment rate of people with disabilities. Using the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC), we show that Southern European countries have the smallest disability employment gap. Whereas stricter employment protection legislation is found to be beneficial for people with disabilities on the labour market, other labour market policies specifically intended to benefit this group do not strongly affect their chances on the labour market. These findings support the social investment perspective and show that social policies can have a positive effect on the employment of people with disabilities.

The Economic Gains from Equity

How much is inequity costing us? Using a simple growth accounting framework we apply standard shift-share techniques to data from the Current Population Survey (1990-2019) to compute the aggregate economic costs of persistent educational and labor market disparities by gender and race. We find significant economic losses associated with these gaps. Building on this finding, we consider which disparities generate the largest costs, paying specific attention to differences in employment, hours worked, educational attainment, educational utilization, and occupational allocation. We also examine gaps in the returns on these variables. Our findings suggest that differences in employment opportunities and educational attainment make the largest contributions by race; differences in returns on these variables also contribute materially to the total costs. Differences by gender are primarily driven by gaps in employment and hours. Given the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on the labor market outcomes of women and people of color, as well as the fact that the U.S. population is increasingly racially diverse, these costs will only increase in the future.

The consequences of non‐standard working and marital biographies for old age income in Europe: Contrasting the individual and the household perspective

AbstractThe article addresses the question of how individuals with non‐standard work or family histories fare under different national pension systems in terms of their individual and household income in old age. It provides a comprehensive overview of the relationship of life course with later life individual and household income, and thereby goes beyond previous research that either focuses on one or the other. Life history data for 12 European countries of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) are used to examine old age individual and household income of individuals (a) with non‐standard working histories (e.g., non‐standard employment or unemployment), (b) with family instabilities (e.g., divorce or single parenthood). The results show that non‐employment and low‐status employment are old age income risks for both genders. Having children represents a burden for household income and for women's individual income only if associated with employment interruptions. Cross‐national variation is stronger for the relationship of old age income with the employment history than with the fertility history. Especially Beveridge‐plus countries that provide unconditional basic pension schemes mitigate previous life course inequality.

Habitus, campus experience, and graduate employment: personal advancement of middle-class students in China

ABSTRACT In the harsh Chinese graduate labor market, urban, middle-class students continue to outpace those from rural, underprivileged backgrounds in job access and occupational attainment. Literature attributes this graduate employment gap to varied accumulation of social capital embedded in their social network, leading to advantages of middle-class. This social network-capital approach, however, rarely revealed the influences of a gradually established market system and ignored the agency of the individual job seekers. To gain a more comprehensive understanding towards this graduate employment discrepancy, this article examines the behaviors of the graduates not only in their job search processes, but also during campus experiences. Inspired by the concept habitus, this study aims to understand the cultural processes that underlie individual advancement throughout higher education, and consequently, the transition from higher education to the labor market. Drawn upon the interview data, this article found that middle-class students, compared with their underprivileged counterparts, have more sophisticated understanding towards a competitive labor market, higher level of confidence in mobilizing their agency, and apply more strategic plans towards future. This article argues that these delicately constructed middle-class disposition and behaviors guided by such disposition jointly contribute to the better performances of middle-class during job search.

Covid-19 and The Gender Gap in Employment Among Parents of Young Children in Canada

Economic and social disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic have important implications for gender and class inequality. Drawing on Statistics Canada’s monthly Labour Force Survey, we document trends in gender gaps in employment and work hours over the pandemic (February–October 2020). Our findings highlight the importance of care provisions for gender equity, with gaps larger among parents than people without children, and most pronounced when care and employment were more difficult to reconcile. When employment barriers eased, so did the gender–employment gap. The pandemic could not undo longer-standing cultural and structural shifts motivating contemporary mothers’ employment. The pandemic also exacerbated educational inequalities among women, highlighting the importance of assessing gendered impacts through an intersectional lens.

Surviving the employment gap: a cross-sectional survey of internationally educated nurses.

To examine the extent to which the type of financial assistance (personal resources, social programmes and earnings) and source country influence the length of time for internationally educated nurses to secure employment as regulated nurses in Canada. Internationally educated nurses must professionally recertify in order to work as regulated nurses in Canada. For many, it can be a lengthy, cumbersome and costly process that delays employment, while others recertify and secure employment quickly. Financial assistance in the form of personal resources, or from social programmes or earnings from working could contribute to the length of time to recertify. When internationally educated nurses cannot readily recertify, they turn to survival jobs where they can remain and never practice their profession in Canada or leave the country to work in jurisdictions where it easier to obtain professional credentials. Data were collected via cross-sectional survey of internationally educated nurses (n=1186) who were immigrants, permanent residents and employed as regulated nurses. Multiple linear regression was employed to examine the influence of the type of financial assistance (personal resources, social programmes and earnings) and source country on time to regulated nurse employment. Regression model explained 9.3% of variance in time to regulated nurse employment. Three predictors were statistically significant: source country, social programmes and earnings. Personal resources was not a significant predictor. Financial assistance helps internationally educated nurses survive the regulated nurse employment gap. The type of financial assistance and source country influences the length of time to regulated nurse employment. Provides initial evidence to support the development of policies, and educational and social programmes to assist internationally educated nurses with financially surviving the gap in regulated nurse employment.

A Care-Led Recovery From Covid-19: Investing in High-Quality Care to Stimulate And Rebalance The Economy

The COVID-19 pandemic has both devastated employment prospects, particularly of women, and exposed the longstanding neglect of care systems and poor employment conditions of care workers. Most recovery programs propose to stimulate employment by focusing on investment in construction, ignoring gender equality issues. This paper argues for public investment in high-quality care services and better conditions for care workers to build a more gender-equal caring economy. Using input–output analysis, across selected European Union countries and the United States, the study shows a care-led recovery has superior employment outcomes to investment in construction, even when wages and hours are matched. In particular, matching employment and wages in care to the high levels of Scandinavian countries would raise employment rates by more than 5 percentage points and halve most gender employment gaps, while the net cost of investment in construction that achieved as much would generally be at least twice as high. HIGHLIGHTS Public investment in high-quality care is vital to building a more gender-equal economy. Recovery from COVID-19 requires investment in social, not just physical, infrastructure. A care-led, rather than construction-led, recovery program creates more jobs and reduces gender inequality. More jobs would be created even when employment conditions for care workers are improved. A more caring economy, employing more people in care jobs, is also a greener economy.

A Cross-Sectional Analysis of Employment Returns to Education and Health Status in China: Moderating Role of Gender.

Based on the nationally representative sample data from the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS-2015), this study examines the relationship of education levels and health status with an individual's probability of being employed in China. The findings obtained from the binary logistic regression estimator suggest that people with a higher level of education were more likely to be employed than those who have less or no education. The individual with university or above education was found to be 85% more likely to be employed than college or equal diploma holders. Further, the healthier individual was found to be 11% more likely to be employed than relatively less healthy. Moreover, the resulting coefficients obtained from the moderation effect suggest that all of the two-way interaction effects among health status and education levels with gender are not statistically significant even at the 10% level. The results suggest that there was no multiplicative effect of gender with health status and level of education on an individual's probability of being employed. Further, the study also suggests important policy implications in the light of China's active labor force market and the gender gap in employment.

Initial return to work and long-term employment patterns: Associations with work-related permanent impairment and with participation in workers' compensation-based return-to-work programs.

Roughly 10% of injured workers experience work injuries that result in permanent impairment and a permanent partial disability (PPD) award. This study aimed to characterize and quantify long-term employment outcomes for injured workers, by the degree of whole body impairment (WBI) and by participation in several workers' compensation (WC)-based return-to-work (RTW) programs. A retrospective cohort of 43,968 Washington State workers were followed for up to 10 years after WC claim closure (2009-2017). Degree of impairment was classified as: (1) no PPD award, (2) PPD award with WBI < 10%, or (3) PPD award with WBI ≥ 10%. State wage files were used to construct employment outcomes for regression, modeling: (1) time to first RTW, (2) time to first RTW interruption, (3) RTW volatility, and (4) employment gaps. Wage patterns and employment outcomes differed significantly by the degree of impairment. Compared to other workers, workers with WBI ≥ 10% had delayed RTW, shorter average times to first RTW interruption, and higher rates of both RTW interruptions and quarters without wages. Time to first RTW averaged over a year, increasing with the degree of impairment. About 9% overall-and 27% of workers with ≥10% WBI-had no observed wages after claim closure. In adjusted models, workers with WBI ≥ 10% had significantly poorer employment outcomes, compared to workers with no PPD award (p < 0.001). State wage files provide an efficient approach to identifying RTW patterns. Workers with permanent impairment were at substantially higher risk of poor employment outcomes. WC-based RTW programs may promote better employment outcomes.

Native-immigrant differences in the effect of children on the gender pay gap

This paper explores gender differences in the career paths of immigrant and native parents before and after childbirth using Spanish administrative data and an event study specification. I find an important gender pay gap emerging after childbirth for both immigrants and natives, and that the drivers of these gender pay gaps strongly differ between natives and immigrants: while children generate higher gender gaps in labour participation and part-time work for natives, the gender gaps in employment and permanent employment are greater for immigrants. I investigate whether the deterioration of mothers’ careers originates from workers’ or employers’ decisions, and show that the main reason for native mothers is to temporarily stop working, while for immigrant mothers is being dismissed. Finally, I show that the educational background of parents is an important determinant of the native-immigrant differences I find in the effect of children on the gender pay gap, while the cultural background is not.

Family Policy Outcomes: Combining Institutional and Demographic Explanations of Women's Employment and Earnings Inequality in OECD Countries, 1975-2005

Women's employment and earnings, as well as earnings inequality, have been rising in OECD countries in recent decades. This dissertation answers questions pertaining to how family policies have facilitated women in combining motherhood and employment, and how women's earnings have affected the inequality between households. Based on well over a million person-level observations, this study covers 18 OECD countries and a period from 1975 to 2005. Reconciliation policies were shown to reduce the employment gap between mothers and women without children, while policies financially supporting families with children enlarge this motherhood-employment gap. Very long periods of leave, however, negatively affect the employment of mothers. More educated women benefit more from reconciliation policies than less educated. Women's rising earnings were found to have attenuated inequality between households. Family policy rrangements that facilitate women's employment not only contribute to smaller inequalities within households, but also between households.

Early-Life exposure to rainfall shocks and gender gaps in employment: Findings from Vietnam

Abstract Despite the achievement of gender equity in education in many developing countries, a gender gap still exists with respect to formal employment. Through inhibiting women's empowerment and reducing the supply and productivity of labour, this gap results in poorer development outcomes. This paper examines whether exogenous rainfall shocks experienced in early life explain variations in future formal sector employment outcomes. It does so for Vietnam, a country that is highly vulnerable to rainfall shocks. The paper employs data from the Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey and rainfall data from the Gridded Monthly Time Series Dataset. Findings suggest that rainfall shocks experienced early in life have a long temporal reach by reducing the probability of formal sector employment for women but not for men. Other findings indicate that the gendered impact of rainfall shocks operates through differential effects on educational attainment and that shocks occurring in the first and second year of life are most important.

Path-Dependencies in Employment Trajectories Around Motherhood: Comparing Native Versus Second-Generation Migrant Women in Belgium

A sizeable body of literature has shown that the migrant-native employment gap is larger among women with children than among childless women, suggesting that the transition to parenthood has a stronger impact on the employment trajectories of migrant origin women compared to those of native women. However, due to the limited use of longitudinal data, our understanding of the mechanisms generating differential employment trajectories around the transition to parenthood remains limited. This study adopts a life course perspective to address path-dependencies in employment trajectories around the transition to motherhood. Using longitudinal data and fixed-effects models that compare within-individual changes in contractual working hours around the transition to parenthood between natives and second-generation migrants of Southern European and Turkish or Moroccan origin in Belgium, we find no migrant-native differentials among women with low employment rates before the birth of their first child and only limited differentials in employment trajectories around parenthood among women with medium and high employment rates before parenthood. This indicates that there is a strong path-dependency of employment trajectories around parenthood for migrant women and natives alike, but that second-generation migrant women generally have a lower pre-birth labour market attachment than native women which accounts for the frequently observed migrant-native differentials in maternal employment.

Women’s Employment, Wages, and the Household

Gender inequality in the labour market is interconnected with unequal sharing of care responsibilities by gender at home. While the unequal treatment of men and women in the labour market is illegal, gender gaps in employment and earnings are a persistent feature of labour markets. It is challenging to distinguish women’s true preferences for combing work and family life from employers’ discrimination against women. Women’s preferences for staying at home, working part-time, or in non-standard employment forms are often believed to drive gender inequalities in the labour market. This view contradicts the finding that gender imbalances in combing work and care are often reflected in lower well-being of mothers and children. This article reviews a selection of papers on gender gaps in employment, earnings and well-being published recently by JFEI and prospects avenues for future research.

Effect of economic sectors on employment in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The motif of this study was to determine the effect of economic sectors on employment in Sub-Saharan Africa, given that the Sub-Saharan African region had had about two decades of sustained economic growth. Thirty Sub-Saharan African countries were used in this study, their data that was obtained and used spanning from the year 1990 to the year 2015. The study made use of the traditional neo-classical aggregate production function in the estimation of the regression results. The software program that was used in data analysis was STATA. Hausman test was undertaken and it determined that fixed effects estimations were preferred to random effect and as a result fixed effects were utilized in the study in carrying out regression analysis. On effect of economic sectors on employment, foreign direct investment was found to negatively influence employment though the influence was not statistically significant. The export and agriculture variables negatively and statistically significantly influenced employment. All the other variables in the study were found to positively and statistically significantly influence employment. Empirical results established that the gender gap in employment was maintained in the whole period of the study with more men being employed than women.

Kein schnelles Ende der Corona-Krise: Mittelfristige Produktions-, Beschäftigungs- und Investitionslücken der deutschen Industrie

Although a number of economic indicators are suggesting that 2020 ended with a strong recovery following the sharp downturns in the spring, the return to a normal business cycle in Germany is likely to be slow in coming. When measuring and interpreting output gaps, it is important to bear in mind that German industry has actually been in reverse gear since the end of 2017, and in recession since mid-2018. In the fourth quarter of 2020, industrial production was still around 9 per cent below the annual average for 2018. The IW Business Survey asked firms about the production, employment and investment gaps they were expecting. In November 2020 both service providers and manufacturers were already predicting an increase in their output gaps for the first half of 2021. By 2022, the gaps in manufacturers' production, employment and investment will have closed significantly, although half of them expect production shortfalls to continue in 2022. Those industrial firms reckoning with reduced production in 2022 put the size of their output gap at around 5 per cent. The largest gap will be in investment, at just over 6 per cent. The employment gap in manufacturing is likely to be some 4 per cent - provided the recovery is not jeopardised by a deterioration in price competitiveness.

The Racial Gap in Employment and Layoffs during COVID-19 in the United States: A Visualization.

A large body of sociological research has shown that racial minorities and women experience significant disadvantages in the labor market. In this visualization, the author presents evidence from the Current Population Survey examining the effects of the coronavirus disease 2019 crisis on racial and gender inequalities in employment in the United States among prime-age workers. The author shows that the white-nonwhite gap in employment increased significantly during the post-outbreak period. Results from individual fixed-effects regression models show a strong white male advantage in the likelihood of being laid off for post-outbreak months compared with women, black men, Hispanic men, and Asian men.