Level Of Labor Demand Research Articles

Not beyond output–input: evidence on service productivity change from input–output models

This paper utilizes data from a series of seven regional input–output models for Washington State to document labor productivity change from 1963 through 2002. The paper documents broad contours of structural change in the Washington State economy, and changes in the level of labor needed to deliver a constant level of final demand, given changes in interindustry structure and labor requirements. The paper also decomposes changes in the level of labor demand due to productivity change, technical input–output relations, and changes in final demand. Service industries are found to be prominent sources of labor productivity improvement.

Employment security and the demand for labour in Europe

This paper analyses the impact of employment security on labour demand. The approach taken is to estimate a dynamic labour demand function that allows for the effect of changes in a measure of employment security derived from surveys of employers. The estimation uses panel data on employment (both in terms of the total number of employees and total hours worked) for seven European countries for the period 1981–1994. The results suggest that employment security can have significant effects in slowing down the dynamic adjustment of labour demand. The paper also finds some (less robust) evidence that employment security can increase the long run level of labour demand in terms of total hours, but not the number of persons employed.

The Determinants of Take-Up of SYETP Wage Subsidies for Youth

The number (i.e. the supply) of young persons eligible for assistance under the SYETP scheme was large in relation to the number actually commencing employment under the scheme, which suggests that supply was unimportant in determining take-up. An alternative explanation of SYETP take-up is that the important factors were those that influenced employers' demand for young workers subsidized under SYETP. These alternative explanations are examined and tested using econometric techniques, and it is found that demand influences alone provide a satisfactory explanation for changes in the number of commencements over the period analysed. These demand-side factors include the proportion of youth wages subsidized under SYETP and the overall level of labour demand in the economy. This finding has a number of policy implications for the programme that recently replaced SYETP, the Jobstart programme, as it means that factors that determined the number of SYETP commencements can be influenced or altered by the Commonwealth government in a systematic manner in order to change the number of commencements.

Immigration and the natural rate of unemployment in Australia

This paper presents an indirect test of the proposition that a decrease in the rate of immigration into Australia during the early 1960s lowered the efficiency with which unemployed persons and unfilled job vacancies were matched, and increased labor turnover, thereby increasing the “natural” rate of unemployment. A theoretical model of employment growth is used to derive an expression for the steady-state relationship between unemployment and vacancies. Estimates of the model are obtained for the period 1955 i–1973 ii during which distinctly different immigration levels occurred. The empirical results are not consistent with the contention that a decrease in immigration caused the relationship between unemployment and job vacancies in Australia to shift outward. Therefore, the evidence suggests that the unemployment rate associated with a given level of labor demand was not significantly increased by the reduction in immigration to Australia.