Occupational Labor Market Research Articles

Including migrant skills in a knowledge economy: The politics of recognition of foreign qualifications, work experience and industry courses

AbstractThe lack of skilled labour pushes mature knowledge economies towards importing skills. Previous studies have shown that migrants' economic and social integration in their host societies depend on the recognition of their skills. Yet, the degree to which the certificates of migrants and their practical experience are recognised and additional training is offered, is contested. Interests conflict not only between unions and employers, but also among employers and unions themselves. We argue that social partners' preferences on foreign qualification recognition (FQR), recognition of experience and industry‐wide training (in the following: FQR and related measures) are mainly determined by the existence of occupational labour markets. An occupational labour market segments the labour market and subsequently restricts access to these segments. FQR and related measures constitute a regulated avenue into these occupational labour markets, protecting these labour markets from an uncontrolled influx of workers. Empirically, this contribution compares whether and how hospitality and construction industries—two sectors that depend heavily on migrants and difficult to organise due to seasonal activity—recognise and remunerate foreign skills. The construction sector recognises and remunerates foreign skills to a much larger extent than the hospitality industry. Adopting the method of difference and based on expert interviews, the paper shows that the more social partners protect their domestic occupational labour market, the more they also support FQR and related measures. The article discusses the implications for migrants' wages and social inclusion, contributing to the analysis of socio‐economic tensions in mature knowledge economies.

Occupational Branch and Labor Market Marginalization among Young Employees with Adult Onset of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder—A Population-Based Matched Cohort Study

We compared labor market marginalization (LMM), conceptualized as days of unemployment, sickness absence and disability pension, across occupational branches (manufacturing, construction, trade, finance, health and social care, and education), among young employees with or without attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and examined whether sociodemographic and health-related factors explain these associations. All Swedish residents aged 19–29 years and employed between 1 January 2005 and 31 December 2011 were eligible. Individuals with a first ADHD diagnosis (n = 6030) were matched with ten controls and followed for five years. Zero-inflated negative binomial regression was used to model days of LMM with adjustments for sociodemographic and health-related factors. In total, 20% of those with ADHD and 59% of those without had no days of LMM during the follow-up. The median of those with LMM days with and without ADHD was 312 and 98 days. Having an ADHD diagnosis was associated with a higher incidence of LMM days (incident rate ratios (IRRs) 2.7–3.1) with no differences across occupational branches. Adjustments for sociodemographic and health-related factors explained most of the differences (IRRs: 1.4–1.7). In conclusion, young, employed adults with ADHD had a higher incidence of LMM days than those without, but there were no substantial differences between branches, even after adjusting for sociodemographic and health-related factors.

Occupational Licensing and Labour Market Fluidity

Occupational Licensing and Labour Market Fluidity

Early Careers of Dropouts from Vocational Training: Signals, Human Capital Formation, and Training Firms

Abstract Dropping out of post-secondary education has negative consequences for career progression. However, as human capital theory predicts and as previous studies have shown, having some training still pays off. For a large part of the European workforce who has attended vocational training, however, the theoretical predictions are less clear and empirical studies are scarce. In occupational labour markets, signalling and credentialism theories predict negative effects of dropping out. Furthermore, apprenticeship dropouts learn at different training firms, which differ in their influence on human capital development and the provision of job opportunities. Relying on a unique panel data set from Germany and estimating normalized fixed effects growth curve estimators, our study reveals the following results. First, the timing of dropping out structures career progression, as late dropouts have the highest employment rates and highest wages within the dropout population. However, in an occupational labour market setting, credentials and signals are still highly important for career progression, as the wage advantage of late dropouts within the dropout population is rather small, and late dropouts suffer a wage penalty when we compare their wage profiles to those of graduates. Second, our study emphasizes the importance of training firms, which influence the human capital development of individuals during the course of training and provide dropouts with connections to their first jobs. Thus, in occupational labour markets, the consequences of dropping out depend mainly on different mechanisms, as in other settings.

Monopsony Power in Occupational Labor Markets

We collect data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and create comparable measures of monopsonistic power for up to 46 occupational labor markets in the USA, starting in 1979 and ending in 2000. Our results suggest most occupational labor markets during that period were characterized by substantial amounts of monopsonistic, wage-setting power. Furthermore, after controlling for individual, time, and industry fixed effects, our results show a negative and significant correlation between the extent of monopsony power that characterizes a market and both, the wages and fringe benefits received by workers.

Political Economy of Work and Employability Educational Challenges and Boundaryless Careers of Youth

The convergence of an aging society, knowledge economy, and professional labor mobility introduces issues for education. Societies are approaching a norm of social politics organized around flexible labor markets and structural exclusion which alters the access to social inclusion through education and employment. The analysis of national education and employment policy is important in the context of a contemporary crisis of capital. The local communities, Taiwan accommodates global capital by deregulating and opening up its markets, takes active interest in the competition for the best brains, and develops a cosmopolitan outlook. The author addresses the rescaling processes affecting Taiwan in which youth are settling. The aim of this paper is to examine some key aspects of social change in Taiwan, which has undergone significant changes in its occupational structure, labor market, economy, and educational provision since the 1980s. The material of the paper draws on three levels. The first deals with the structural and institutional transformations, and some key aspects in its political economy, labor market and education. The second is concerned with occupational and social mobility patterns and trends, and their association with the changing role of education. Finally, this paper explores the experiences of youth to gain an understanding of the social, political, and cultural factors that impinge on school-to-work and social mobility outcomes.

Job opportunities and school-to-work transitions in occupational labour markets. Are occupational change and unskilled employment after vocational education interrelated?

This study links TREE panel data surveying school-to-work transitions in Switzerland with unique job advertising data from the Swiss Job Market Monitor that mirrors individual job opportunities. We investigate: (i) whether occupational change and unskilled entry level employment are two related transition outcomes among graduates from initial vocational education and training (IVET) in the occupational labour market of Switzerland. Our analysis further focuses on (ii) the impact of a low number of occupation-specific job opportunities on the risk of such a combined horizontal and vertical job-education mismatch, and (iii) the extent to which overall labour demand facilitates occupational changes to skilled employment. We make use of bivariate probit analysis to investigate occupational change and unskilled entry employment among IVET graduates as interrelated transition outcomes. The empirical results suggest that occupational change and unskilled entry employment are two interrelated transition outcomes among IVET graduates in Switzerland. The results further support our hypothesis that a low number of occupation-specific job vacancies at labour market entry increase the risk of simultaneously experiencing both forms of job-education mismatches for IVET graduates. High overall labour demand enables occupational changes to skilled employment. We conclude that for an integration of IVET graduates into occupationally and educationally matching positions it is crucial that the IVET programmes offered match labour demand on an occupational basis.

Temporary Foreign Workers in Canada: Are They Really Filling Labour Shortages?

Since easier access to a large supply of foreign labour might generate undesirable incentives on the part of both employers and prospective workers, a Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW ) program requires careful design. Failure at any stage of the process – at time of hiring, during employment, or at the end of the contract – is likely to create significant negative effects on domestic workers and, in the medium term, on the temporary foreign workers themselves. When choosing between domestic and foreign workers, employers are naturally concerned about labour costs and labour productivity. Therefore, a key design feature of any TFW program is the hiring conditions it imposes on employers – conditions that must deal with regional or occupational labour market shortages. Between 2002 and 2013, Canada eased the hiring conditions of TFWs several times, supposedly because of a reported labour shortage in some occupations, especially in western Canada. By 2012, the number of employed TFWs was 338,000, up from 101,000 in 2002, yet the unemployment rate remained the same at 7.2 percent. Furthermore, these policy changes occurred even though there was little empirical evidence of shortages in many occupations. When controlling for differences across provinces, I find that changes to the TFWP that eased hiring conditions accelerated the rise in unemployment rates in Alberta and British Columbia. The reversal of some of these changes in 2013 is welcome but probably not sufficient, largely because adequate information is still lacking about the state of the labour market, and because the uniform application fee employers pay to hire TFWs does not adequately increase their incentive to search for domestic workers to fill job vacancies.

Labor Market Monopsony

There has been a renewed interest in monopsony in labor markets in recent years that includes both the traditional static approach to monopsony, ably reviewed by Boal and Ransom (1997), and the “new” approach to monopsony with more attention paid to dynamic issues, developed in detail by Manning (2003). The articles presented in this supplement highlight both approaches and illustrate the range of labor market settings in which the exercise of monopsony power may be important. The first use of the term “monopsony” in economics is widely attributed to Robinson (1969). Robinson conceived of monopsony as analogous to monopoly. Whereas monopoly refers to the case of a single seller confronted in a market by many buyers, monopsony refers to the case of a single buyer confronted in a market by many sellers. Just as the monopolist faces a downward-sloping demand curve for his product and

Incoherence in the South African labour market for intermediate skills

This article is concerned with the production and employment of technically skilled labour at the intermediate level in South Africa. Three differing labour market pathways to intermediate skilling are identified. These are: the traditional apprenticeship route, the new ‘Learnerships’ pathway (similar to the ‘modern apprenticeship’ schemes adopted in the UK) and finally, further education and training college programmes in engineering and related technical fields. It is argued that in sharp contrast to the highly structured conditions of the artisanal ‘occupational labour market’ of yesteryear, the three training pathways that operate in South Africa today possess few linkages with each other or with employment. In addition, as access to opportunities in the labour market have opened up politically for black South Africans since the advent of democracy in 1994, so access to employment after training has weakened for this social grouping because of the lack of structured linkages between these pathways and employment, and more generally, because of the failure of the ‘new South Africa’ to create meaningful pathways from school to work.

Cross‐national differences in job quality among low‐skilled young workers in Europe

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyse the extent to which the quality of the jobs of low‐skilled young workers is affected by the structure of education and training systems in various European countries. It focuses on the differences between countries providing fairly general education (internal labour market (ILM) contexts) and countries offering more specific vocational education (occupational labour market (OLM) contexts).Design/methodology/approachLogistic regression analyses.FindingsIt is found that low‐skilled young workers are worse off in OLM countries than in ILM ones, with respect to employment in a permanent job, employment in a non‐elementary job and participation in continuing vocational training. However, in OLM countries low‐skilled young workers are less often involuntary part‐time employed than those in ILM countries. With regard to participation in continuing vocational training, the ILM‐OLM contrast is larger in manufacturing than in services; regarding employment in a permanent job the reverse is true.Originality/valueIt is shown that the labour market position of low‐skilled young workers is affected by the structure of education and training systems in various European countries. The upgrading of the skills demanded in the European “knowledge economies” will therefore have less severe consequences for low‐skilled young workers in ILM countries than in OLM countries, since the acquisition of occupationally specific skills is organized differently between the two institutional contexts.

Occupational Networking as Normative Control

With workforce flexibility and nonstandard, “contingent,” work have come new mechanisms for labor market mediation and workforce control. This study examines occupational connection and control in two groups of contract professionals. For these occupational practitioners, networking is a mechanism for labor market regulation as well as for finding work. Networking perpetuates occupational norms that demand commitment towork, accountability to clients, and reciprocity among colleagues. Adhering to occupational norms, contractors develop reputations that can enhance the likelihood of referrals from colleagues for contract assignments. Collegial exchange in an occupational labor market, therefore, exposes contractors to the informal sanctions of normative control.

Occupational Segregation and the Gender Gap in Workplace Authority: National Versus Local Labor Markets

Previous research linking occupational gender segregation to the workplace authority gap assumes that the effect of gender composition is invariant across occupations, ignoring the important distinction of whether an occupation's relevant labor market is local or national. We offer a new method for defining occupational labor markets and hypothesize that the effect of occupation gender composition on the authority gap will be strongest in national labor market occupations. Both sexes' odds of possessing work authority decline with the representation of women; this effect is strongest in the more desirable, national labor market occupations. Assuming occupations are part of one labor market results in understating the gender composition penalty for national labor market occupations.

Informal Labour Market Governance: the Case of the British and German Media Production Industries

This article is concerned with labour market transactions in the occupational labour markets (OLM) of the media production industries of Germany and the UK. In both countries, labour markets are characterized by a high inter-firm mobility of workers and patterns of short-term employment and freelance work. In this environment, missing standards produce uncertainty about skill levels of workers and qualification needs of firms. As a result, co-operation costs increase and opportunism becomes possible. It will be argued that, in the absence of manifest labour market institutions such as apprenticeships or skill certificates, which traditionally safeguard OLM transactions, the use of intermediaries and restriction of access will take over as informal mechanisms for governing the labour market. Labour market data from interviews with media firms in Germany and the UK, and from surveys on German and British media professionals, are used in order to test this hypothesis.

How many social workers now? A review of census and other data

At any point in time, an understanding of how many social workers there are, who employs them, where they are employed, and so on, is of interest to professional bodies, practitioners and student social workers, as well as social work course providers in terns of demand for new graduates. Change in numbers of social workers over time can also be used to interpret political and social changes impacting on the human service industry, as well as professional turnover. Previous labour market analysis research in this journal has documented census counts of social workers up to the 1991 census, and reviewed employment outcomes for different cohorts of graduating BSW students as indicators of social work occupational labour market status. This article updates the previous research with 1996 census data, as well as some more recent ABS 2000 labour Force Survey data. The updated data show an increase in the number of social workers up to year 2000. However, there is both continuity and change in other labour market dimensions of the occupation social work, and, like previous research, the article finds some irregularities between the actual counts. The article argues that the monitoring of counts should be continued, using data sources other than the census, and longitudinal surveys of new graduates would be a useful supplement to enhance our understanding of the change in number of social workers over time.

IS INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY A "BOUNDARYLESS" PROFESSION? A SEQUENCE ANALYSIS OF THE CAREER HISTORIES OF IT PROFESSIONALS FROM 1979-1998.

Prior research on the Information Technology (IT) profession reflects two conflicting schools of thought. Some consider IT an occupational labor market (OLM) where careers comprise sequences of job...

Internal Labour Markets in Japan

Japanese labour market practices have attracted considerable attention in the West for two reasons. Firstly, innovative human resource management (HRM) is responsible for the development of competitive industrial sectors. Secondly, inner flexibility of the labour market has produced low unemployment and wage flexibility. This study, originally published in 2000, provides a thorough investigation of the distinctive features of Japanese internal labour markets (ILM) and occupational labour markets (OLM), closely analyses important changes in ILM and considers future developments. It combines a mixture both of descriptive and of theoretical and econometric work and builds on the authors' wel- known previous research in this area. Also contains a detailed case study and the econometric analysis of HRM policies used by a large Japanese firm. Although the focus is on Japanese ILM, international comparisons are made throughout, mainly with reference to Europe and the United States.

The Ministry as an Occupational Labor Market

Attachment to one's employer is not the same as attachment to one's occupation (profession), but little theory or research exist to explain why the two are different. The authors integrate arguments about market viability of occupational labor markets from Bridges and Villemez and arguments about professional values from Wallace in offering the hypothesis that attachment to one's employer is based primarily on economic rationality, whereas attachment to one's occupation (profession) is determined more by adherence to a service calling associated with that occupation. Data from a national sample of 2,435 clergy in two Protestant denominations having an open labor market structure support this hypothesis.

The causes and consequences of occupational segregation: a simultaneous equations approach

Lewis and Shorten (Applied Economics, 1991, 23, 167–77) have proposed that male and female earnings, male and female labour force participation rates and occupational segregation are simultaneously determined in the labour market. They estimate their model for Australia using 1981 Census data and find substantial evidence to support their hypothesis. However, there have been no subsequent studies to empirically test their hypothesis for other countries. In this paper their model for the United States using 1990 Census data is replicated. All but one of the coefficients on the endogenous variables have the same signs as those reported by Lewis and Shorten, which tends to support their model. The specification of Lewis and Shorten's model is tested and it is inappropriate for the US data. The model is then reformulated and re-estimated. The reformulated model also shows substantial evidence of simultaneity between occupational segregation and other labour market outcomes.

The Determinants of Young Women's Wages: Comparing the Effects of Individual and Occupational Labor Market Characteristics

We investigate the effects of individual resources and occupational labor market characteristics on the wages of young women, using data from the 1979 through 1987 waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. We find that both individual- and occupational-level factors have significant effects on the wage attainment process, indicating that young women's wages are determined in part by their own human capital, but also by characteristics of their occupations. Net of work experience and occupational characteristics, our data show that mothers tend to be paid less than non-mothers. However, tests of statistical interaction indicate that the negative effect on wages of being a mother holds for non-black women only. We use these findings to inform theory regarding the effects of market relative to human capital characteristics on wages, and to understand how young non-black mothers are at a particular disadvantage in the wage attainment process.