Workers In Labor Market Research Articles

Formação universitária, expectativas e condições de inserção profissional

This article deals with the relation between education and work on the basis of an empirical inquiry performed among university students. The data were obtained through a questionnaire applied to undergraduate students of selected courses of a public university in Parana State. The results present the characterization of these students in terms of employment from the moment they begin their studies until graduation, as well as the prospects in the areas of work and education. They also discuss the students’ perceptions of the labor market and its relation with school education. The use of theoretical references in the area and the comparison of the empirical data with other similar studies and official statistics show that in spite of the social pressure for young people to pursue a university degree, this in itself does not guarantee their insertion in the labor market or better work and salary conditions. Keywords: university education, labor market, employment, unemployment, education.

The Relationship between Hours of Domestic Services and Female Earnings: Panel Register Data Evidence from a Reform

We provide evidence on the quantitative relationship between household time con-straints and female earnings. In 2007, a tax discount reform in Sweden reduced prices of outsourced domestic services (ODS) by 50 percent. Linking population register data on yearly tax discounts with annual earnings, we find that 60 percent of married women’s freed hours are applied to labor market work, with ODS of approximately 2-4 percent of full-time work in a year being linked to a 2-4 percent earnings increase, but with no additional increase thereafter. The analysis carefully considers potential bias and outlines the required assumptions regarding reverse causality.

Workplace violence and the changing nature of work in Europe: Trends and risk groups

Incidence rates of third party workplace violence in Europe have increased, but little is known about the causes thereof. It has been suggested that the growth of the service sector and the intensification of work could be responsible for the increase. This study aimed to identify trends in the prevalence of physical workplace violence across Europe, as well as to uncover factors explaining these trends. Three cross-sectional waves (1995, 2000, and 2005) of the European Working Conditions Survey were used, involving 58,520 workers and covering 15 European member states. Logistic regression analyses were performed to investigate associations between work characteristics and violence prevalence. Workplace violence increased significantly during the study interval. Although violence was clearly related to specific characteristics of the labour market (gender, age, sector, etc.) and the work environment (client contact frequency, time pressure, control, and computer work), recent changes in the European labour market composition and work environment could not explain the increase in violence. In jobs characterized by high levels of computer work in particular, violence appears to be an emerging risk. Our results suggest that the nature (and perhaps quality) of client contact is changing, leading to higher violence risks.

The Impact of Deviations from Desired Hours of Work on the Life Satisfaction of Employees

We estimate an ordinal logistic multilevel model to examine the determinants of the life satisfaction of employees in Europe. Data drawn from the European social survey reveals that deviations from desired hours of work (measured as the absolute difference between the actual and preferred weekly number of hours) reduce overall life satisfaction, but the effect is smaller in countries with higher unemployment rates. We interpret this finding as evidence that in environments where anxieties about job security are high, having a job brings about a certain level of life satisfaction regardless of the gap between the actual and preferred time spent in the labor market. We also find no statistically significant difference between male and female employees with regard to the impact of the work hours mismatch. This finding suggests that the gender differences which would have been expected in this context are already incorporated in the respondents’ subjectively determined desired hours of work. In fact, further examinations confirm that ‘desired hours’ are associated with both socio-demographic characteristics (in particular, gender) and preferences for labor market work.

Sex Work and its Linkages with Informal Labour Markets in India: Findings from the First Pan‐India Survey of Female Sex Workers

SummaryBased on the results of the First Pan India Survey of Female Sex Workers (n=3000), this paper positions sex work within the broader spectrum of informal labour markets that women engage with in India. It puts forth an important dimension missing so far in sex work studies in India – of sex workers with prior or simultaneous labour market work experience. Informal labour markets act as important sites/junctures linking poverty with sex work. For a substantial proportion of respondents, sex work was not their first experience of paid work. In the face of poverty and an early quest for livelihoods, they were pushed into informal labour activities, characterised by low, sticky wages and imminent possibilities of abuse. Placed in this context, their later entry into sex work emerges with a strong economic rationale and agency, as a deliberate, calculated choice offering higher incomes.

All Work and No Pay: Violations of Employment and Labor Laws in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City

Despite three decades of scholarship on economic restructuring in the United States, employers' violations of minimum wage, overtime and other workplace laws remain understudied. This article begins to fill the gap by presenting evidence from a large-scale, original worker survey that draws on recent advances in sampling methodology to reach vulnerable workers. Our findings suggest that in America's three largest cities, violations of employment and labor laws are pervasive across low-wage industries and occupations, affecting a wide range of workers. But while worker characteristics are correlated with violations, job and employer characteristics play the stronger role, including industry, occupation and measures of informality and nonstandard work. We therefore propose a framework in which employers' noncompliance with labor regulations is one axis of a competitive strategy based on labor cost reduction, contributing to the reorganization of work and production in the 21st century labor market.

House Prices, Home Equity and Health

Home equity has a strong impact on individual health. In UK household panel data home equity lowers the likelihood of home owners exhibiting a broad range of medical conditions. This is due to increased use of private health care, reduced hours of work and increased exercise. Home equity, unlike income, does not increase risky health behaviours such as smoking and drinking. Home equity is highly pro-cyclical. The positive health effects of home equity gains on home owner health over the business cycle offset the negative effects of labour market conditions and work intensity as shown in US data by Ruhm (2000).

Effects of positive attitude and optimism on wage and employment: A double selection approach

Using two samples from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79), a longitudinal data set from the United States, and following a double selection approach, the current study estimates the worker's employment and wage equations simultaneously with positive attitude and optimism as additional explanatory variables. Modeling employment as a bivariate decision process, the study examines different factors that influence the worker's labor market participation decision, the employer's hiring decision and the wage rate. The study finds the evidence that the worker's positive attitude and optimism affect the worker's employment probability from different angles: the former through the participation decision and the latter through the hiring decision. Following an alternative approach, this study also provides strong support to the earlier finding that positive attitude affects the worker's wage positively. Interestingly, the effects of attitude variables on the worker's wage are found to be quite comparable in magnitude to the wage effects of the traditional human capital variables.

All Work and No Pay: Violations of Employment and Labor Laws in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City

Despite three decades of scholarship on economic restructuring in the US, employers’ violations of minimum wage, overtime, and other workplace laws remain understudied. This article begins to fill the gap by presenting evidence from a large-scale, original worker survey that draws on recent advances in sampling methodology to reach vulnerable workers. Our findings suggest that in America’s three largest cities, violations of employment and labor laws are pervasive across low-wage industries and occupations, impacting a wide range of workers. But while worker characteristics are correlated with violations, it is job and employer characteristics that play the stronger role, including industry, occupation, and measures of informality and nonstandard work. We therefore propose a framework where employers’ noncompliance with labor regulations is one axis of a competitive strategy based on labor cost reduction, contributing to the reorganization of work and production in the 21st century labor market.

Reintroduction into the job market of former workers with RSI of an electronics industry in São Paulo metropolitan area, Brazil

ObjectivesThis study addresses chronic illness due to work as a factor of social and economic exclusion, analysing the process of reintegration into the labour market of workers with repetitive strain...

Employment First: A Beginning Not an End

Employment is the first question we ask about most adults in society. In part, every adult is defined by their contributions, their work. Even as employment for people with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities has gained attention, there has been a growing awareness that the labor force participation rate for this population has remained flat (Butterworth et al., 2011). Although there is variability across states, there is an absence of a clear message at state and national levels regarding employment of persons with disabilities. This has resulted in inconsistencies in employment policies, practices, and procedures. There are, however, an increasing number of states that are taking notice of this and seeking to develop a clear message that employment for persons with disabilities must be a priority (Hoff, 2011). Some state developmental disabilities agencies have embraced a presumption of employability or the option of employment for all persons with disabilities. This is clearly seen in the efforts of the State Employment Leadership Network (SELN), a network of 23 state developmental disability agencies sponsored by the Institute for Community Inclusion and the National Association of State Directors of Developmental Disability Services (http://www. communityinclusion.info). These state efforts have often been framed under the umbrella of Employment First. Employment First, reflecting a series of policies, practices, and procedures based upon a collection of guiding principles, is leading states and providers to the adoption of service delivery strategies for persons with disabilities, including those with the most significant disabilities, that lead to systemic change and competitive integrated employment. The main point about Employment First is that employment should be the very first option offered to any adult with a disability, before any kind of nonemployment option. There are currently over 25 states that are focused at some level on the concept of Employment First (Hoff, 2011). In some cases, the focus is specifically on individuals with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities, while in other cases this effort is cross-disability. Some of these efforts have been spearheaded by public systems, and in other cases have been grassroots in nature, with advocates pushing for changes in policies and practices that prioritize community employment. Central to Employment First are the establishment of clear public policies (e.g., legislation, policy directives that prioritize community employment. To date, approximately 10 states have such policies in place. As in all major systemic change efforts, there are a set of guiding principles that help shape these change efforts. For Employment First these guiding principles are being discussed by a wide array of people in policymaking, self-advocacy, and practitioner roles. Although there is not always consensus, these principles include:

Class Relations and All-Cause Mortality: A Test of Wright's Social Class Scheme Using the Barcelona 2000 Health Interview Survey

The aim of this study is to test the effects of neo-Marxian social class and potential mediators such as labor market position, work organization, material deprivation, and health behaviors on all-cause mortality. The authors use longitudinal data from the Barcelona 2000 Health Interview Survey (N=7526), with follow-up interviews through the municipal census in 2008 (95.97% response rate). Using data on relations of property, organizational power, and education, the study groups social classes according to Wright's scheme: capitalists, petit bourgeoisie, managers, supervisors, and skilled, semi-skilled, and unskilled workers. Findings indicate that social class, measured as relations of control over productive assets, is an important predictor of mortality among working-class men but not women. Workers (hazard ratio = 1.60; 95% confidence interval, 1.10-2.35) but also managers and small employers had a higher risk of death compared with capitalists. The extensive use of conventional gradient measures of social stratification has neglected sociological measures of social class conceptualized as relations of control over productive assets. This concept is capable of explaining how social inequalities are generated. To confirm the protective effect of the capitalist class position and the "contradictory class location hypothesis," additional efforts are needed to properly measure class among low-level supervisors, capitalists, managers, and small employers.

Social interaction impact on attitudes: Native Swedes’ attitudes towards labour immigrants and guest workers after hurricane Gudrun

We make use of a natural experiment, hurricane ‘Gudrun’, and investigate the impact of human social interaction on attitudes towards guest workers on the labour market. Comparing attitudes between one group of Swedish forest owners that had interacted with guest workers and one that had not, differences in attitudes towards guest workers are identified concerning their labour market performance and work morale. Those who had interacted have a more positive attitude than those who had not. The experimental setting makes it possible to claim that this observed difference in attitudes was an effect of social interaction.

Working plans of people with mental disorders employed in Italian social enterprises.

Social Enterprises (SEn) are innovative companies that help disadvantaged people (e.g., individuals with mental disorders) with the work integration process. This study explores the working plan patterns of people with mental disorders employed in SEn. A cross-sectional design was adopted. One hundred and forty individuals with mental disorders employed in 19 Italian SEn filled out a battery of questionnaires. We identified three patterns of working plans: Cluster 1 (n = 39, 30%) showed a stronger intention to work in a competitive labor market; Cluster 2 (n = 16, 12.3%) showed a stronger intention to stop working; Cluster 3 (n = 75, 57.7%) showed a stronger intention to continue working at a SEn. Most of the sample had a pattern of intentions to keep working, thereby demonstrating the effectiveness of the SEn approach to work integration. Future studies should explore the approach further. Indeed, these results seem important for implications for practice, suggesting that people with mental disorders inside SEn can improve their level of interpersonal skills and reinforce their vocational identity, and ultimately increase their chances of employment in the regular labor market.

Mercado de trabalho e rendimento no meio rural brasileiro

This paper analyzes the entrance of men and women into the rural labor market and generates earning equations for the Brazilian rural areas in 2007 with the PNAD microdata. The Heckman procedure is adopted to avoid selectivity bias. Results had also shown the Brazilian rural labor market. Besides the fact that female workers on average have a higher level of qualification than male workers, male's earnings are higher than the female's. Women that receive the governmental transfer program Bolsa Familia , tend to offer less work in the rural labor market.

Segregation, entrepreneurship and work values: the case of France

This paper studies the interaction between labour market integration, “work values” and entrepreneurial capital inside minority communities. A simple model of labour market segmentation with ethnic capítal and endogenous transmission of cultural values inside a minority group is presented. It emphasizes the role of entrepreneurial capital as an important driver of labour market integration and as a promoter of meritocratic work values inside the community. The case immigrants in France is then empirically studied as an example. We show that the contrasted labour market outcomes and work values of immigrants from Maghreb versus Southern Europe are, statistically, totally explained away by their different levels of entrepreneurial capital.

Reinserção no mercado de trabalho de ex-trabalhadores com LER/DORT de uma empresa eletrônica na região metropolitana de São Paulo

Este estudo aborda o adoecimento crônico pelo trabalho como fator de exclusão social e econômica por meio da análise do processo de reinserção no mercado de trabalho de trabalhadores com Lesões por Esforços Repetitivos (LER), desligados de uma empresa eletroeletrônica da região metropolitana de São Paulo. Foram considerados 722 trabalhadores que haviam tido comunicações de acidentes de trabalho (CAT) emitidas por LER no período de 1987 e 1992. As informações coletadas por meio de questionários enviados por correio e entrevistas realizadas em 1994 e 2000 foram analisadas no tocante a aspectos relacionados ao processo de adoecimento, à discriminação sofrida até o rompimento do vínculo empregatício e à busca por um novo emprego, com base na teoria das representações sociais. Dos 250 questionários respondidos, a maioria era de mulheres (98%) e jovens (67,2%) tinham até 34 anos de idade). Entre os trabalhadores desligados (n=195), na maioria entre 1991 e 1992, 89,2% continuavam desempregados em 1994. Entre as dificuldades alegadas para a reinserção no mercado de trabalho, as mais citadas foram: sintomas nos braços, limitação funcional, estigma da doença e a condição de ex-funcionário da empresa em questão. Coloca-se a necessidade de se repensar o sistema de proteção e vigilância à saúde do trabalhador, bem como de uma política pública de reabilitação profissional.

Effects of positive attitude and optimism on employment: Evidence from the US data

Using samples from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) and following a bivariate probit approach, the current study estimates the worker's employment probability equations in both cross-sectional and panel data frameworks. The study demonstrates that the employment of the worker, which depends on both the worker's labor market participation decision and the employer's hiring decision, is determined partly by the positive and optimistic attitude of the worker. The effects of these attitude variables on both decisions are even larger than the effects of standard human capital variables. The study further demonstrates that the attitude variables affect employment probabilities of men and women differently because their effects on participation and hiring decisions are different.

Do Constraints on Market Work Hours Change Home Production Efforts?

We study variations in housework time and leisure consumption when workers are subject to labor market work hours constraints that prevent them from working the optimal number of hours. Using data from two large nationwide longitudinal surveys, we first document that such constraints are widespread--about 50 percent of all households in our sample had been bound by such constraints in at least one year, highlighting the significance of studying household behaviors in labor markets under binding constraints. Our analysis reveals strong heterogeneity and asymmetry in workers' reactions to this type of market constraint that are difficult to reconcile with standard preferences and home production technology. In particular, we find that the ceilings on market work hours induce workers to increase time spent on housework, including cooking, and to reduce vacation time. In contrast, floors on market work hours do not significantly affect time spent on housework, but may boost vacation time. On net, workers constrained by hours ceilings (floors) appear to have more (less) leisure time. Meanwhile, the response to hours ceilings are more pronounced among unmarried households. We also find some evidence that the magnitude of the effects of market hours constraints increases with the persistence of these constraints. Our results are robust to a number of variations in measurement metrics, econometric specifications, sample selection criteria, and data sources. We argue that the empirical results documented in this paper can be taken as additional moments conditions against which equilibrium models with home production are calibrated.

How the economy affects teenage weight

Much research has focused on the proximate determinants of weight gain and obesity for adolescents, but not much information has emerged on identifying which adolescents might be at risk or on prevention. This research focuses on a distal determinant of teenage weight gain, namely changes in the economy, which may help identify geographical areas where adolescents may be at risk and may provide insights into the mechanisms by which adolescents gain weight. This study uses a nationally representative sample of individuals, between 15 and 18 years old from the 1997 US National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, to estimate a model with state and year fixed effects to examine how within-state changes in the unemployment rate affect four teenage weight outcomes: an age- and gender-standardized percentile in the body-mass-index distribution and indicators for being overweight, obese, and underweight. I found statistically significant estimates, indicating that females gain weight in weaker economic periods and males gain weight in stronger economic periods. Possible causes for the contrasting results across gender include, among other things, differences in the responsiveness of labor market work to the economy and differences in the types of jobs generally occupied by female and male teenagers.