Labor Market Success Research Articles

Doing a Doctorate in BISE in Germany, Austria and Switzerland? A Debate on the Why, What and How

In recent years, the doctorate degree has been subject to a seeming loss of value (e.g., Cyranoski et al. 2011; Economist 2010; Guldner 2019). One striking indicator is the decline in number of top executives with doctorates: while 58% of board members of German companies held a doctorate in 2007, this number has shrunk to 44% in 2017 (Guldner 2019). Other indicators of labor market success have also deteriorated for doctorate holders over the last 20 years: incomes have fallen and fewer doctorate holders than before are working full-time – at a time when the labor market has otherwise developed well (e.g., Economist 2010). Yet, the need for highly qualified employees for example with respect to digitization has been growing. Just recently, for example, companies’ demand for experts on Artificial Intelligence (AI) has seen a stark increase (Fasse and Kerkmann 2018). This makes it all the more surprising that the growing number of doctoral students (an average growth of...

The Integration of Refugees in Germany: Intergovernmental Aspects of Public Sector Costs and Benefits

ABSTRACTIn this paper, the 2015/16 budgetary effects of refugee immigration in Germany are analyzed. The Public sector spends billions of Euros to accommodate and supply refugees and to integrate those into the labor markets who have a perspective for a permanent or even medium-term residence permit. In case of a successful integration, we can expect flow backs in the form of income tax revenues and social security contributions. The costs and financial benefits of several types of refugees are modelled and – weighted with the number of cases – added to a public sector ‘financial balance’. Financial ‘profitability’ depends on labor market integration, the volume of labor participation and the future income earned, which depends on qualification, education and training. The levels of government will experience diverging cost-benefit balances. They will only receive future flow backs in the form of their share in the income tax revenues if refugees find jobs within their territories. Administrative efforts should concentrate on a successful labor market integration of refugees and no longer continue the policy of preventing them from entering the labor market for many years and thereby making them heavily dependent on public transfer payments.

Putting Tasks to the Test: The Case of Germany

The demand for skills has changed throughout recent decades, favouring high-skilled workers that perform abstract, problem-solving tasks. At the same time, research shows that occupation-specific skills are beneficial for labour market success. This article explores (1) how education, workplace characteristics and occupations shape job task requirements, (2) how within-occupation job task content relates to wages, and (3) whether these relationships vary across types of tasks due to their presumably varying degrees of occupational specificity. Using worker-level data from Germany from 2011–2012 the article shows that a large part of task content is determined by occupations, but that task requirements also differ systematically within occupations with workers’ educational levels and workplace characteristics. Moreover, differences in task usage within occupations are robust predictors of wage differences between workers. Finally, the results suggest that non-routine manual tasks have a higher occupational specificity than abstract and routine tasks, and that manually skilled workers can generate positive returns on their skills in their specific fields of activity.

African Immigrants to Australia: Barriers and Challenges to Labor Market Success

The purpose of this paper is to examine the employment experiences of immigrants of African background in the Australian labor market. Drawing on the findings from a qualitative study conducted in South East Queensland, the paper identifies several barriers and challenges faced by Africans to meaningful employment and labor market success. The paper indicates the need to develop targeted policies to eliminate employment discrimination, reduce barriers to meaningful employment for good settlement and successful integration of African immigrants to Australia.

Young, successful, precarious? Precariousness at the entry stage of employment careers in Germany

ABSTRACT The article investigates entry-stage employment trajectories of young people in Germany, asking whether transitions into continuous employment indicate successful labour market integration. Applying a novel multidimensional approach to precariousness to individuals’ employment and household trajectories, we understand entry-stage employment trajectories holistically. The balanced-panel sample is drawn from the German Socio-Economic Panel, with a focus on young men and women between 15 and 25 years of age in the first year of the sample period who had been employed at least once (n = 1360). Dual-channel sequence-cluster analysis reveals considerable variation in the precariousness of young people’s entry-stage employment. While almost all young men and women experience periods of precariousness, the durations vary substantially. Precarious employment or precarious living conditions frequently occur during education. Our results confirm that individuals with disrupted employment trajectories are seldom successfully integrated into the labour market and frequently experience precarious employment. In previous research, transitions into continuous employment have been understood as the hallmark of successful labour market integration. This holds true for young women but not for young men, who experienced continuous and precarious entry-stage employment. To correctly identify young men’s successful labour market integration, additional information about their employment precariousness is required.

The Surprising Labor Market Success of Part-Time Community College Students

ABSTRACT Considerable research has focused on the academic outcomes of part-time undergraduates, but few studies have addressed their post-college labor market outcomes. This study compares the post-college earnings of community college students based on different full-time, part-time, and stop-out trajectories during their first four semesters. Community college students who enroll part-time with no stop-outs during their first four semesters earn significantly more after college than full-timers. Part-timers who did stop out are earning at least as much as their full-time counterparts. These effects are evident both among those who graduate/earn 60 credits and among those who do not. Compared to consistent full-time enrollees, two groups of community college undergraduates have significantly lower post-college earnings in the full sample: full-timers who interrupt their studies with a stop-out and persons who mix full-time with part-time and stopping-out.

Determinants of successful labour market integration as exemplified by the German Green Card programme

ABSTRACT The German Green Card programme that was in place from the year 2000 to 2004 was intended to counter claims propagated by industry and trade associations of a shortage of ICT professionals. Even if it is debatable whether the programme can be judged as a success in terms of the absolute number of Green Cards issued, it provides important insights into the long-term integration of migrants from third countries coming to Germany for employment purposes – a matter where the Green Card programme was successful beyond the policy it was originally designed for. Using sequence and cluster analyses to examine the employment trajectories of some 1500 Green Card recipients who came to Germany reveals the personal, occupational and firm-specific characteristics that have contributed to successful integration. It emerges that the likelihood of a Green Card recipient becoming successfully integrated in the German labour market is quite high and grows with increasing establishment size. Other factors beneficial to integration are a moderate agreed wage, employment in a more technically-oriented occupation and in particular being of Central or Eastern European origin. Against the background of the current debate surrounding demographic change and the growing skill shortages, the results obtained in this paper provide indications as to how human capital that is in demand globally and is correspondingly mobile can be bound to the German labour market in the longer term.

The Citizenship Advantage: Immigrant Socioeconomic Attainment in the Age of Mass Migration

Scholars who study immigrant economic progress often point to the success of Southern and Eastern Europeans who entered the United States in the early 20th century and draw inferences about whether today’s immigrants will follow a similar trajectory. However, little is known about the mechanisms that allowed for European upward advancement. This article begins to fill this gap by analyzing how naturalization policies influenced the economic success of immigrants across generations. Specifically, the author creates new panel data sets that follow immigrants and their children across complete-count U.S. censuses to understand the economic consequences of citizenship attainment. The author finds that naturalization raised occupational attainment for the first generation that then allowed children to have greater educational attainment and labor market success. He argues that economic progress was conditioned by political statuses for European-origin groups during the first half of the 20th century.

Introduction: A Good Start? Determinants of Initial Labor Market Success

Previous articleNext article No AccessIntroduction: A Good Start? Determinants of Initial Labor Market SuccessDavid CardDavid CardUniversity of California, Berkeley Search for more articles by this author University of California, BerkeleyPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Journal of Labor Economics Volume 37, Number S1January 2019A Good Start? Determinants of Initial Labor Market Success Published for the Society of Labor Economists, Economics Research Center/ NORC Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/701217 Views: 621Total views on this site © 2019 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Disconnected Young Adults: Increasing Engagement and Opportunity

Even in a strong job market with low overall unemployment, a substantial number of youth are disconnected from work and schooling. Being disconnected during early ages (between sixteen and twenty-four) can have negative impacts on future labor-market success and other outcomes. This article presents data and summarizes the literature on the causes and consequences of youth disconnection. It discusses evidenced-based policies and programs that show promise for engaging or reengaging young people and meeting the needs of particular groups of disconnected youth, including effective education and training programs (both in secondary and postsecondary contexts), targeted reforms to community college systems, strategies for addressing barriers to work and school including provision of comprehensive services, and demand-oriented solutions that improve job opportunities for youth.

The Impact of Forced Migration on Mortality: Evidence From German Pension Insurance Records.

We examine the long-run effects of forced migration for individuals who were displaced from Eastern Europe to Germany in the aftermath of World War II. Evidence suggests that displaced individuals were worse off economically, facing a considerably lower income and a higher unemployment risk than comparable nondisplaced Germans, even 20 years after being expelled. We extend this literature by investigating mortality outcomes. Using social security records that document the exact date of death and a proxy for pre-retirement lifetime earnings, we estimate a significantly and considerably higher mortality risk among forced migrants compared with nondisplaced West Germans. The adverse displacement effect persists throughout the earnings distribution except for the top quintile. Although forced migrants were generally worse off regarding mortality outcomes, those with successful labor market histories seem to have overcome the long-lasting negative consequences of flight and expulsion.

Intergenerational income mobility: access to top jobs, the low-pay no-pay cycle and the role of education in a common framework

Studies of intergenerational mobility have typically focused on estimating the average persistence across generations. Here, we use the relatively new unconditional quantile regression technique to consider how intergenerational persistence varies across the distribution of sons’ earnings. We find a J-shaped relationship between parental income and sons’ earnings, with parental income a strong predictor of labour market success for those at the bottom, and to an even greater extent, the top of the earnings distribution. We explore the role early skills, education and early labour market attachment in shaping this pattern for the first time. Worryingly, we find that the association with childhood parental income dominating that of a high level of education at the top of the distribution of earnings. In this sense, education is not as meritocratic as we might hope, as those with the same detailed educational attainment still see a strong association between their earnings and their parental income. Early labour market spells out of work have lasting effects on those at the bottom, alongside parental income.

Testosterone, risk, and socioeconomic position in British men: Exploring causal directionality

Lower testosterone levels in men are observationally associated with worse health, but it is unclear whether they contribute to well-established social gradients in health. Mendelian Randomization studies suggest positive testosterone-health associations may not be causal, with some intervention studies suggesting testosterone administration could be harmful. Since testosterone is rarely measured in general population studies, very little is known about how testosterone varies by social position. Differences by education and household income in British men aged 60-64y were recently reported, but it is unclear whether this reflects an influence of socioeconomic position (SEP) on testosterone, influence of testosterone on SEP, or confounding.In the UK Household Longitudinal Study, a nationally-representative survey of UK adults, we examine social differences in testosterone in 3663 men aged 16-97y in 2010–12. We consider diverse dimensions of SEP: education, employment status, equivalized household income and personal earnings. Multivariable regression is used to explore social differences in testosterone across the adult life-span (16-97y). Secondly, Mendelian Randomization (MR), an approach which uses gene variants as instrumental variables for endogenous exposures, is used to investigate causal directionality. We examine associations with risk-taking, a plausible mediator of testosterone-SEP associations.In observational models no social differences in testosterone are seen, but MR models suggest a positive influence of testosterone on earnings (increase in log-transformed monthly earnings (GBP) per standard deviation increase in testosterone: 0.51, 95%CI: 0.03,1.05, p = 0.07) and probability of being in work (probit coefficient:0.25, 95%CI: 0.01,0.51, p = 0.06). Though MR estimates are less precise, results are consistent with previous literature linking testosterone with labour market success. The discrepancy may reflect suppression of observational associations by factors positively correlated with testosterone and negatively correlated with SEP, or indicate an influence of typical lifetime testosterone, which may be better indexed by genetic variants than by single testosterone measurements subject to noise.

How key transitions influence school and labour market careers of descendants of Moroccan and Turkish migrants in the Netherlands

AbstractMost educational research examines school outcomes at certain stages or at the final stage of the school career. This article looks at the entire school career and the transition to the labour market. It focuses on key transitions to identify the educational institutional arrangements that either help or hinder school and labour market success among the most disadvantaged groups in the Netherlands: young people of Moroccan and Turkish descent. The Dutch educational system is one of the most complicated school systems in Europe. Consequently, parents and children have to make many ‘choices’ when navigating it. Many of these key ‘choice’ moments are selection points, either because they are not real choices but dependent upon a teacher’s recommendation or because parents and pupils need a great deal of information about the school system in order to make a choice. This usually results in inequalities for the most disadvantaged groups. Because selection is disguised as ‘choices’, the structural inequalities of the Dutch school system are not usually perceived as blocking mechanisms for disadvantaged students

Is childhood intelligence associated with coexisting disadvantages in adulthood? Evidence from a Swedish cohort study

Abstract Intelligence has repeatedly been linked to a range of different outcomes, including education, labour market success and health. Lower intelligence is consistently associated with worse outcomes. In this study, we analyzed the associations between intelligence measured in childhood, and the risk of experiencing a range of different configurations of coexisting disadvantages in adulthood. We also examined the role of educational achievements in shaping the associations. The analyses are based on the Stockholm Birth Cohort, a data material that encompasses more than 14,000 individuals born in 1953, with follow up until 2008. Latent class analysis was used to identify four different outcome configurations characterized by varying levels of disadvantages, measured in terms of unemployment, social assistance recipiency, and mental health problems. The results show that those who scored lower on an intelligence test in childhood were at an increased risk of experiencing all configurations characterized by increased levels of disadvantages during adulthood. However, these associations were contingent on educational achievement. Once the models were adjusted for school marks and educational attainment, no association between intelligence and disadvantages remained. These findings highlight the importance of developing strategies to facilitate optimal educational opportunities for all children, at all levels of cognitive performance.

Competing with confidence: The ticket to labor market success for college-educated women

This study examines whether the female earnings gap results from gender differences in preferences for competition and confidence. We use laboratory experiments on college seniors to measure tastes for competition and confidence and then track these subjects’ labor market experiences in the early years after college. Women's compensation is positively correlated with preferences for competition coupled with confidence while men's compensation is not. Women who exhibit a taste to compete and are confident about their performance earn substantially more than other women and do not earn less than men. Further, enjoying competition or being confident alone is insufficient to raise compensation. Half of this female earnings’ effect is explained by college major and labor market controls, but even controlling for these characteristics, a higher taste for competition for the most confident women results in more than a 7% increase in compensation.

Few are called, fewer are chosen: Elite reproduction in U.S. academic accounting

Abstract Previous work on academic accounting in the U.S. has documented impressive concentrations in publications and labor market success by faculty with credentials from a relatively small number of prestigious universities. However, this work left open the pre-doctoral origins of people producing this work, and therefore could not rule out the operation of a meritocracy. Utilizing the theoretical contributions of Bourdieu, this paper argues that elite institutions constitute a unique positioning of symbolic capital that favors a particular type of candidate over equally able others. Through systematic personnel movements into doctoral programs, elites within the discipline are able to reproduce. A study of faculty cultural capital acquired from previous matriculation at elite universities offers empirical support for these ideas. The results suggest that previous studies of concentration in academic accounting are set in motion because of this systematic selection process.

On becoming a skilled migrant: towards habitus transformation through higher education

ABSTRACTResearch on the labour market experiences of highly skilled migrants has revealed the crippling employability challenges they face in the UK workplace resulting from the devaluation of their homeland qualifications and experiences. Studies on highly skilled migrants from Zimbabwe have revealed how migrants have to resort to semi-skilled and unskilled work for survival. Little is known, however, about the education and labour market experiences of migrants who come into the UK without degrees and subsequently acquire a UK degree. Drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital and habitus, this article explores the higher education and labour market experiences of this group, as revealed by in-depth interviews with 20 participants. Findings reveal that these participants’ habitus is a complex dynamic interaction of diverse (pre)dispositions and strategies which result in them reporting better labour market success than Zimbabwe-degreed migrants. Arguably, their experiences suggest the emergence of a new UK-based habitus for Zimbabwean migrants.

Local deprivation and the labour market integration of new migrants to England

ABSTRACTUsing data on new migrants to England from the Quarterly Labour Force Survey, we show how a key component of migrant integration - labour market progress in terms of wages and unemployment rates – is broadly positive in the early years after arrival across a range of migrant groups and across gender. However, the precise level of labour market success achieved varies considerably across groups reflecting both the initial entry-level and labour market trajectories after migration. Migrants from Western Europe and the Old Commonwealth countries have unemployment rates (wages) which are generally lower (higher) than other groups, particularly non-white groups, while migrants from the Accession countries experience relatively low unemployment but also low wages. Groups which have better outcomes on entry also tend to experience higher rates of progress over time in England. However, the extent of multiple deprivation in the local authority where migrants reside interacts with years since migration to dampen wage trajectories for some groups and accounting for deprivation highlights the importance of internal migration for access to employment. The results emphasise structural explanations for patterns of labour market integration of new migrants to England.

Labour market and social integration of Eastern European migrants in Scotland and Portugal

This article investigates the factors influencing the labour market performance and social integration of Eastern European migrants in two regions within Scotland and Portugal. Given the potential links between these outcomes, measures of labour market success and integration into the host community are examined from a multi-dimensional perspective, including by modelling these jointly within a statistical framework. The main findings indicate the importance of a range of factors for labour market and social integration, which change with time and cannot be limited to any definable set of goals. In particular, proficiency in the host country’s language plays a key role in obtaining a highly paid job and social integration, but not for the probability of employment. Further, maintaining family links and cultural identity often outweigh the importance of being integrated into host communities. Other human capital factors, especially whether the job matches skills and qualifications, strongly influence some labour market outcomes, whilst migrant network variables are important for integration more widely. Focus on the immediate earnings and having a job tends to be prioritised over career progression, which can lead to better integration. Drawing on the insights from economics and human geography, this paper stresses that these findings hold both in the separate and joint modelling approaches. The effect of the influences is also found to be generally similar in Scotland and Portugal. However, some significant differences are detected between the host communities with regards to the impact of previous migration and friendship on social integration and age on employment.