Labor Market Value Research Articles

The student success center network provides national infrastructure for supporting and scaling reform

AbstractThe Student Success Center Network (SSCN) is dedicated to advancing racial justice and economic mobility by dramatically and equitably increasing the number of students earning postsecondary credentials with labor market value. Managed by Jobs for the Future, the SSCN has worked since 2012 to develop, implement, and scale student success strategies nationally. Each of the 16 statewide Student Success Centers supports community colleges in its state to increase student completion rates, close equity gaps, and strengthen communities. Throughout its history, the SSCN has evolved from a loose association of a few organizations to a powerful “network of networks” that collectively serves over 500 colleges and drives student success reforms, such as Guided Pathways, on a national scale. As the Network grows in size and maturity, it has strengthened its impact as a vehicle for supporting and scaling reform and evolved to meet the changing needs of learners.

The perceived labour market value of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in Europe and the USA

ABSTRACT The advantages of higher education have received significant attention over time. However, recent research seems to challenge this assumption. It highlights that returns to education may be subject to inflation, may vary in relation to skills, and may not be equally distributed, thus posing new questions about the role of formal education. Against this background, the growing popularity of new forms of online education and training such as MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) have emerged. Investigating the way different learners use MOOCs may contribute to a deeper understanding of the evolution of the labour market outcomes of both traditional and technologically-mediated educational qualifications. Based on 43 semi-structured interviews conducted with MOOC users in the USA and in Europe, this article explores the potential of MOOCs on the labour market. The positional competition approach can help frame the results, inasmuch as MOOCs emerge as ‘soft credentials’. These accessible and flexible educational tools seem to provide applicants in the job queue with additional resources, although their labour market value remains modest and ancillary to formal educational qualifications. From a long-term perspective, however, increasing reliance on this type of training may contribute to further shifting of responsibilities from collective actors to individual workers.

Labor Market Returns to MBAs From Less‐Selective Universities: Evidence From a Field Experiment During COVID‐19

AbstractMaster's degree enrollment and debt have increased substantially in recent years, raising important questions about the labor market value of these credentials. Using a field experiment featuring 9,480 job applications submitted during the early months of the COVID‐19 pandemic, I examine employers’ responses to job candidates with a Master of Business Administration (MBA), which represents one‐quarter of all master's degrees in the United States. I focus on MBAs from three types of less‐selective institutions that collectively enroll the vast majority of master's students: for‐profit, online, and regional universities. Despite the substantial time and expense required for these degrees, job candidates with MBAs from all three types of institutions received positive responses from employers at the same rate as candidates who only had a bachelor's degree—even for positions that listed a preference for a master's degree. Additionally, applicants with names suggesting they were Black men received 30 percent fewer positive responses than otherwise equivalent applicants whose names suggested they were White men or women, providing further evidence of racial discrimination in hiring practices.

Post-entrepreneurial Wage-employments: Signaling Effects from Entrepreneurial Experience

While there is a growing body of research examining the labor market value for former entrepreneurs, the theoretical and empirical evidence so far provides surprisingly mixed conclusions. Building on signaling theory, we provide novel explanations for earnings differences among individuals who enter paid employment after periods of entrepreneurship. Based on a unique and homogenous sample of 213 Swedish former entrepreneurs, we test hypotheses concerning how various signals of human capital, individually and collectively, affect the former entrepreneurs’ wages as employees. We find that ex-entrepreneurs’ salary levels prior to their entrepreneurial endeavors and when longer time has passed since their last employment offer important signals of their general capabilities when returning to wage work. We also find that an individual who signals higher level of entrepreneurship-specific human capital through longer entrepreneurial experience or a proven capability to grow a venture receives higher wages than other ex-entrepreneurs. Moreover, we document that third-party endorsement emanating from the receipt of government subsidies results in higher salaries. Most importantly, we find that signals of stronger general capabilities, represented by higher wages prior to being an entrepreneur, are magnified by successful entrepreneurship and by endorsements from external fund providers. These findings are consistent with the signaling literature arguing that complementary signals are particularly useful to reducing uncertainty in noisy environments, such as situations when employing ex-entrepreneurs.

RETRACTED ARTICLE: A conversational analysis of aging in China from a cross-section of the labour market: a corpus-based study

Modern society is undergoing rapid technological growth and urbanisation. Despite the positive changes, there are still vulnerable categories of the population that cannot adapt so quickly to the new realities. The ageing process in the developed countries of Europe, America and Southeast Asia raises the issue of further labour market development. In this regard, it is vital to understand the linguistic picture of a quickly ageing labour market, such as China. Drawing on Conversation Analysis, this study aims to investigate the impact of the ageing process on the labour market and identify age-related trends in communication, behaviour and attitude. The focus is on the socio-economic context. The most important finding is that in most contexts, the language behaviour of ageing labour market participants leaned on three underpinning factors: age, social status and exposure to emotional pressure. Older adults in the Chinese labour market value their informal status, accept social hierarchy, follow strict etiquette rules, tend to self-victimise, and complain about feeling vulnerable. The present findings can help social workers in China improve care for ageing adults and allow other researchers to investigate older people’s participation in the labour market.

Implications of labour market on career development in the early childhood care programme in Adamawa state, Nigeria

Introduction: The issues of job type and career choice are always controversial and more demanding as they require careful act and guidance to make the right decisions; career choice and the factor of the labour market is one major element in every society that influences the standard of living. Purpose: This study investigated the implication of the labour market on career development in the Early Childhood Care Program (ECCE) in Adamawa state. The study explored various factors of career choice in relation to the labour market norms and values as well as its implication towards sustaining a satisfactory career choice and development in ECCE Design: The study adopted survey research design. The population of this study consists of parents, teachers and other members of the respective communities in Adamawa State. A sample of 175 was randomly selected in five educational zones in Adamawa State. Structured questionnaire was used for data collection and data were analysed descriptively using frequency table, percentage and weighted average. Results: The finding revealed that factors such as the decline in ECCE certificates, favoritism toward other professions, low remuneration, lack of society acceptance, and inadequate counseling services make the labour market hinder career development in ECCE among career seekers. However, it is established in this paper that opportunities are still in abundance for career seekers in ECCE. Recommendations: The study recommended among other that there should be campaign awareness as well as services of counseling for career seeker in ECCE.

“Physicists” and “lyricists”: Whom the Russian labor market values higher?

In this study, we raise a simple question: do STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) education and employment provide a monetary return to professionals with this specialization and holding STEM jobs? If yes, what is the premium across ages and cohorts? We compare wages of professionals with the STEM education and without it, holding STEM jobs and those working in alternative positions, and with various combinations of education and jobs. We estimate premiums for the whole sample as well as for different age groups and cohorts. For this, we use various large data sets with variables for college majors and occupational positions. The main conclusion is that the STEM specialization brings no significant benefits compared to non-STEM majors and jobs. The premium does not emerge over experience or age; moreover, older groups engaged in STEM-related work tend to experience a wage penalty. As we move from younger to older age cohorts, the wage growth declines which means that wages for younger age cohorts catch up and take over the older ones, even if they were initially lower. These results are reproduced on all available datasets.

Community College Pathways for Disadvantaged Students

Objective: We estimated the correlations between the “pathways” chosen by community college students—in terms of desired credentials and fields of study, as well as other choices and outcomes along the paths—and the attainment of credentials with labor market value. We focused on the extent to which there were recorded changes in students’ choices over time, whether students made choices informed by their chances of success and by labor market value of credentials, and the impacts of choices on outcomes. Method: Using micro-longitudinal administrative data on a full cohort of Kentucky community college students, we provide summary data on a range of pathway characteristics and outcomes, as well as binomial and multinomial logit estimates of how pathway characteristics affect the odds of completing different kinds of credentials. Some of the logit estimates were based on random or fixed effects models. Results: We found that several characteristics of chosen pathways, such as field of study and desired credential as well as early “momentum,” affected outcomes. Student choices of pathways—and especially differences by gender and academic readiness—sometimes ran strongly counter to information about later chances of success in terms of probabilities of completing programs and attaining strong earnings. Students also changed pathways quite frequently, making it harder to accumulate the credits needed in their fields. Contributions: Attainment of credentials with greater market value by community college students could likely be improved by appropriate guidance and supports for them along the way and perhaps by broader institutional changes as well.

Getting Closer to the Needs of the Labour Market

A key measure of higher education’s success is the extent to which it can provide the labour market with graduates that excel not only in terms of their professional training but also in terms of their soft skills. To that end, the competences of students entering university must first be diagnosed. This paper presents a pilot study of such a measurement system, together with first-year results obtained by a rural university faculty. Equipped with better information about its freshman students, such a university can begin to address the revealed competence deficiencies actively, and, over the course of an entire training cycle, further improve the labour market value of the young people when they come to graduate. Provisional recommendations are made at the end of this paper; however, further data analysis, once undertaken, may lend further support to the practical approach outlined here.

Assessing the effects of labor market dynamics on CO2 emissions in global value chains

International production fragmentation has led to substantial changes in labor market, such as job creation/job loss, changing labor market structure and labor productivity. Such changes are perceived to affect CO2 emissions of those economies that participate in different parts of global value chains. This paper develops an accounting framework relating CO2 emissions to labor market shaped by global value chains. It analyses the influential factors driving CO2 emissions, and documents several pervasive empirical patterns. This is based on the recent environmental accounts developed by the European Commission and the World Input-Output Database over 2000–2014. The results show that the growth of CO2 emissions is primarily reduced by intensity effect, followed by labor market structural change due to participation in value chains, while it is driven by labor productivity effect and job creation. In particular, the foreign job creation effect is mostly emission-increasing, even in those economies with shrinking domestic employment. These results highlight the role of labor market and global value chains in climate policymaking.

Should the Federal Government Fund Short-Term Postsecondary Certificate Programs?

We consider whether the US should extend Pell grant eligibility to short-term certificate programs (i.e., below the current floor of 600 hours). We provide new descriptive evidence on who enrolls in certificate programs, who completes them, how students finance them, who defaults on loans, and on their labor market value. We find that certificate holders earn about 10 percent more than high school graduates and 20 percent more than those with GEDs. The variance in their labor market value across fields is very high. But we find no evidence that certificates above and below the current cutoff generate differing labor market value. Thus, reducing the floor for program eligibility would improve the opportunity of low-income workers to receive effective job training.

It's about time: The timing of entrepreneurial experience and the career dynamics of university graduates

The labor market value of former entrepreneurs remains unclear, with both theory and empirical evidence offering mixed conclusions. We suggest that the timing of entrepreneurial experience matters and helps unravel this puzzle. Using Danish employer-employee data on a large sample of university graduates, we show that the option value of testing an entrepreneurial opportunity and then returning to paid employment decreases over an individual's career. We follow individuals for fifteen years and compare the labor market outcomes of never, early, and late entrepreneurs based on the timing and type of entrepreneurial experience in their careers. Compared to those who have never been entrepreneurs, early entrepreneurs earn higher wages, while late entrepreneurs experience a significant wage penalty in the long run. Both the timing and the type of entrepreneurial experience shape individuals’ subsequent career trajectories and employers’ uncertainty about their value, which partly explain long-term wage differentials.

The Curse of Extremes: Generalist Career Experience and CEO Initial Compensation

Studies argue that generalist CEOs are more valued by the market for executive labor and receive higher initial compensation. Challenging this prevailing assumption, we acknowledge the drawbacks of extensive career mobility and predict an inverted U-shape relationship between CEO generalist career experience and CEO initial compensation. Integrating the generalism and specialization views of human capital, we postulate that at an initial level, the acquisition of experience breadth from different firms and industries enables CEOs to broaden their knowledge base, obtain a variety of skills, and thus increase their labor market value and initial compensation. After a threshold, however, the accumulation of extensive levels of career generalism through frequent job hopping across firm and industry contexts gradually causes a lack of experience depth and insufficient career specialization, thereby triggering lower CEO market value and initial pay. Data from 197 CEO appointments in large, publicly traded firms support our predictions. Our results also show that the observed inverted U-shape relationship varies with factors nested at different layers of context, highlighting the contingent nature of this area of research.

Rethinking disadvantage: A social capital approach to widening participation

In England and Wales, the introduction of ?9,250 higher education (HE) tuition fees and concern more broadly about social mobility has led to the creation of a series of initiatives aimed at widening participation (WP). Increasingly, critics argue that these initiatives have failed to achieve genuine representativeness, with lower ranked universities absorbing higher numbers of students from underrepresented groups, who then face additional challenges in securing progression to employment. In this article, we examine dominant narratives in WP programmes in England and Wales in order to assert means of widening access more effectively, in the first instance, but also retention and progression. Rejecting non-subject-specific instrumental approaches that focus directly on graduate labour market value and earnings, we argue that effective WP ought to focus centrally on the institutional value of HE and on fostering social capital, especially in lower ranked universities whose graduates are already discriminated against in the labour market. To this end, we evaluate the deployment of a politics-based WP programme, Rethinking Disadvantage, asserting a set of conclusions for colleagues in other disciplines and institutions who seek to develop their own approaches.

Educational expansion in the Netherlands: better chances for all?

ABSTRACT Higher education in the Netherlands has expanded rapidly in the last two decades, giving rise to concerns about possible negative effects on educational quality and the labour market value of a higher education degree. In this paper, we use data from national graduate surveys and adult literacy surveys to explore this. While no evidence was found for a negative effect of the HE expansion on graduate skill levels or unemployment risk, real graduate earnings have decreased over the past two decades relative to those of post-secondary non-tertiary graduates. This does not seem to have been driven by a shift of HE graduates into non-graduate occupations, but rather by a general decline in relative earnings in jobs at all levels. Finally, the more adverse effects of the expansion were particularly apparent for graduates with lower grades, women and graduates with a non-western migration background. These findings indicate that, despite relatively low unemployment, the HE labour market is increasingly becoming a buyers’ market. In this market, graduates with attributes that buyers want – males, native Dutch graduates, high-performers – emerge as relative winners of the educational expansion.

Human Services Data Assets Project: An Initial Review of the 2018 ACNC Dataset & Other Data Sources

The 2018 dataset held by the ACNC was released on 9 June 2020. This initial review has been conducted in order to support the post COVID-19 recovery plan discussions. It is intended to give some insights into the economic and labour market size and value of the charitable Human Services sector in WA as at the 31 December 2018. The information should be read with caution as the data is still being cleaned and may contain erroneous datapoints. Additionally, it is apparent from the collection of this information that there is a need for more robust and fit-for-purpose data collection and definition from the sector which would be of far greater value in understanding the position, trajectory and strategic priorities of the sector in order to ensure ongoing resilience and mission-sustainability.

Understanding the education gap in immigration preferences across countries over time: A decomposition approach

The structure and dynamics of the education gap in immigration preferences are not well understood. Does the gap increase when the economy contracts? To what extent does the gap reflect labour market conflicts versus value polarization? Does the structure of the gap change with labour market and refugee shocks? I use European Social Survey data to decompose the gap into parts reflecting labour market position, social background, and value orientation, and explore how their importance in accounting for the gap change over time. I find no uniform trends in preferences or in the size of the gap, but the gap varies with the unemployment rate and the strength of trade unions. Moreover, positions in the labour market are more important for the gap in times of high unemployment, at the expense of the importance of value orientations. The results show the enduring importance of labour market conflicts for the gap.

Mothers’ employment and child care choices across the European Union

The aim of this paper is to analyse cross-country differences in the maternal employment patterns and the demand for formal and informal child care as interrelated decisions across Europe. We explore a sample of preschoolers and their mothers drawn from the EU-SILC (2005–2013) in a set of 11 EU countries with different institutional settings. The analytical strategy – a set of simultaneous tobit models – allows for mutual interdependencies across decisions. The results vary across welfare regimes and are related to the public provision of child care as well as other dimensions of the institutional context and values. We have found complementarities between paid employment and child care while formal and informal care are shown to be mutual substitutes, even in countries where the provision of external, formal child care is very extended and child care does not depend much on families. This means that the mere expansion of public child care is not enough to improve maternal employment rates. Other institutional aspects of the labour market and societal values also need to be taken into account in this endeavour.

Relationship and Interaction between Person and Work Environment Fit Dimensions

In the context of permanent changes in labour market it is insufficient to assess the correspondence between an employee and job only in terms of an employee’s skills, knowledge and competencies in respect to job requirements. We should search for a greater variety of common aspects between the individual and the working environment s/he acts in. Organizations want to select employees who will best meet the demands of the job, adapt to training and changes in job demands, and remain loyal and committed to the organization. Prospective employees in their turn are looking for the organizations which make use of their particular abilities and meet their specific needs. Today’s high-performing employees are looking for more than compensation packages and benefits, they are interested in the increase of their value in labour market. Congruence between the employee and his/her working environment is examined by the multidimensional theory of person-environment fit. A number of studies proving the impact of different dimensions of person-environment fit on employees’ attitudes and behaviour have been carried out. It is established that different dimensions of fit are related to employees’ behaviour and attitude benevolent for the organization, such as job satisfaction, organizational commitment, better performance quality, lower turnover of employees, organizational citizenship behaviour, job engagement, and lower job stress indexes. Nevertheless, scientific literature review has demonstrated that some forms of person-environment fit have not comprehensively been explored and there is a shortage of integrated studies on individual forms of person-environment fit, as well as their correlation with other variables.The aim of the research was to examine the relations of selected person-environmental fit dimensions and their connections to certain attitudes of employees. The objectives of the research were as follows: to analyze theoretical aspects of person and profession, organization and job fit conceptions and their relation to the attitudes of employees; to analyze the interconnection of employees’ profession, organization and job fit and their relations to job satisfaction and intentions to quit the job in one of the biggest Lithuanian insurance companies. The research is relevant as insurance market of the country is permanently increasing, the number of loyal and competent employees is insufficient and high rates of turnover are notable. Thus, it is important to study the factors relating to the above described context and to analyze how person-job environment fit relates to the factors important to employees’ turnover. The research was implemented during the period of January – February, 2018. The respondents were 91 employees of the insurance enterprise holding professionally and hierarchically different positions in the organization.The data analysis has revealed that positive relationships exist between all explored dimensions of person-environment fit. Further analysis has demonstrated that with the growing person-profession, personorganization and person-job fit, employee job satisfaction is increasing and thus his/her intent to leave a position is diminishing. The only dimension, i.e. demands-abilities fit, did not correlate with the employee intention to leave. The results of the study have also revealed that links between person-environment fit dimensions and the analyzed employee attitudes are more complex than simple direct links.This research revealed the importance of needs – supplies correspondence in forecasting the attitudes of employees important for the organization, i.e. job satisfaction and intentions to quit the job. Skills, knowledge and competencies’ based correspondence to job requirements which is widely analyzed in previous research and practically applied in the employee selection and recruitment procedures, had no forecasting effect on the employees’ attitudes. These results revealed the satisfaction of employees’ needs in the efforts to retain him/her. Moreover, the results indicated that the satisfaction of employees’ needs better forecast employees job satisfaction than employee-organization fit. The research also revealed the indirect impact of person-profession fit on the attitudes of employees. It became clear that employee-profession fit influences needs-suppliers correspondence which forecasts employees’ attitudes. Thus, insufficient person-profession fit preconditions diminishes the satisfaction of employees’ needs, which in its turn directly predicts job satisfaction and intentions to quit the job. This confirms the assumption that employees’ needs as expressed in the organizational environment highly depend on the employees’ embeddedness in their profession.

Stigma, problem drug use, and welfare state encounters: changing contours of stigmatization in the era of social investment

Aim: This study examined the ways in which citizens who have self-identified as having problem drug use experienced welfare state encounters in Denmark and considered the findings in the context of the social investment paradigm.Methods: We conducted qualitative interviews with 106 Danish citizens who identified as having a problem drug use. The interviews were transcribed and coded in Nvivo to classify different types of welfare state encounters experiences.Results: Previous research has documented extensive prevalence of drug-related stigmatization in welfare state encounters; however, approximately two-thirds of the citizens in this study did not recount this kind of stigmatization as predominating. Three prevailing narratives were conveyed by these participants: (1) narratives describing encounters where welfare state authorities approached the participant as ‘a whole person,’ (2) narratives depicting encounters where the participants were submissive, and (3) narratives about welfare state authorities who discredited the significance of the participants' drug problems and imposed expectations considered unrealistic by the participants, e.g. expectations related to labor market performance. In the third type of encounter, participants experienced incongruence between their actual and virtual identities; not because problem drug use was granted master status but because their self-identified severe drug problems were downplayed by the welfare state authorities.Conclusion: Encountering welfare state authorities who downplayed the importance of drug problems gave rise to a form of stigmatization which we conceptualize as ‘neo-stigmatization’ to emphasize the contrast to drug related stigmatization where the importance of drug use is elevated to the point of master status. Neo-stigmatization emerges as politically productive in the context of the social investment paradigm that increasingly ties social worth to labor market value. Alleviating neo-stigmatization requires a political-economic framework that recognizes the value of citizens as not just workers but also caregivers and care receivers.