Routine Jobs Research Articles

Foreign direct investment and onshore employment dynamics: Evidence from German firms with affiliates in the Czech Republic

AbstractIn this paper, we revisit questions about the onshore employment effects of firms that conduct foreign direct investment (FDI) in countries with substantially lower average wages. Our results derive from the use of rich administrative records on the universe of employees in German multinational enterprises (MNEs) that were active in the Czech Republic in 2010. Compared with former studies, the unique data set in this study includes a much higher fraction of small‐ and medium‐sized firms and leads to strikingly different results for service MNEs. Applying coarsened exact matching for firms and an event‐study design, we show that the domestic employment growth of MNEs decreases relative to that of non‐MNEs and that the affected workers are those with low or medium educational attainment in the manufacturing sector and with medium or high educational attainment in the service sector. Regarding workers’ tasks, our results do not show that FDI affects routine jobs beyond a worker's skill level.

Are Routine Jobs Moving South? Evidence from Changes in the Occupational Structure of Employment in the U.S. And Mexico

Employment in middle-wage jobs has declined in the United States over recent decades. One potential explanation for this decline is that these jobs have been relocated to developing countries such as Mexico. We explore the evidence for the primacy of this type of argument by contrasting the observed changes in employment across 175 detailed occupational categories in the U.S. and Mexico. We find that, with few exceptions, occupations that decline in the U.S. have also declined in Mexico, including in industries where trade flows have intensified. The evidence is consistent with common shocks being the dominant force behind the decline of middle-wage jobs in both countries.

Polarization, employment and the minimum wage: Evidence from European local labor markets

The labor market is becoming increasingly polarized as routine jobs disappear. In the flexible US labor market, this has had a limited impact on employment due to the strong employment growth in low-paying manual occupations for workers who are not able to reallocate to high-paying abstract occupations. This may not be the case in some rigid wage European economies, which are capable of creating fewer low-paying manual jobs. We study the effect of a decrease in the proportion of routine jobs on employment and participation rates, conditionally on the level of the minimum wage, in European local labor markets. Our OLS and IV estimates show that the polarization process has a negative impact on employment and participation rates in high minimum wage countries only.

Developing Public Health Emergency Response Leaders in Incident Management: A Scoping Review of Educational Interventions.

During emergency responses, public health leaders frequently serve in incident management roles that differ from their routine job functions. Leaders' familiarity with incident management principles and functions can influence response outcomes. Therefore, training and exercises in incident management are often required for public health leaders. To describe existing methods of incident management training and exercises in the literature, we queried 6 English language databases and found 786 relevant articles. Five themes emerged: (1) experiential learning as an established approach to foster engaging and interactive learning environments and optimize training design; (2) technology-aided decision support tools are increasingly common for crisis decision-making; (3) integration of leadership training in the education continuum is needed for developing public health response leaders; (4) equal emphasis on competency and character is needed for developing capable and adaptable leaders; and (5) consistent evaluation methodologies and metrics are needed to assess the effectiveness of educational interventions.These findings offer important strategic and practical considerations for improving the design and delivery of educational interventions to develop public health emergency response leaders. This review and ongoing real-world events could facilitate further exploration of current practices, emerging trends, and challenges for continuous improvements in developing public health emergency response leaders.

How information and communication technology drives (routine and non-routine) jobs: Structural path and decomposition analysis for China

A comprehensive exploration into the routine/non-routine job implications of information and communication technology (ICT) is crucial for tackling routine-replacing technological change challenges in the digital era. To this end, we propose an integrated input-output (IO) analytical framework to detangle the intertwined relations between ICT and non-ICT sectors, and further incorporate structural path analysis (SPA) and structural decomposition analysis (SDA) to examine the extent to which and how ICT sub-sectors drive the formations and changes of embodied routine/non-routine jobs in ICT. An empirical study using China's national IO tables from World Input-Output Database and the matched occupational employment data derived from 2000 and 2010 Population Census is conducted. We find that China's ICT growth over 2000–2010 has not led to a decline in jobs, which still holds true for both ICT manufacturing and ICT service, as well as for routine/non-routine jobs. We also find an increase in the embodied employment share of non-routine relative to routine jobs. The typical paths “source sector → (intermediate sector) → ICT final demand” generate many routine/non-routine jobs, which are primarily lied in the zero and first rounds. The decomposition results show that the declining sectoral routine/non-routine job coefficients drives the decline of both ICT embodied routine and non-routine jobs (especially the former), which is completely offset by the rising final demand of ICT. The proposed integrated IO analytical framework could also be applied to other indicators and extended to multi-country/region analysis.

Cities and tasks

This paper explores the relationship between routine-biased technological change and agglomeration economies. Using administrative data from the Netherlands, we first show that in dense areas, jobs are less routine-task intensive (i.e. less repetitive and automatable), meaning that jobs cover a larger spectrum of tasks. We then explore how the routine intensity of jobs affects the urban wage premium. We find that the urban wage premium is higher for workers performing non-routine tasks, particularly analytic tasks, while it is absent for workers in routine task intensive jobs. These findings also hold within skill groups and suggest that routinisation increases spatial wage inequality within urban areas. We further provide suggestive evidence that a better matching of skills to jobs and increased learning opportunities in cities can explain these findings.

OBJEK ASESMEN DALAM PERSPEKTIF KURIKULUM 2013

ASSESSMENT OBJECTS IN THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE 2013 CURRICULUMIn loading the K13 curriculum, the outline of the learning program and the learning method unit is said to be a routine job. Regarding a material context, although it is not easy, it can still be handled because of course the assignment has been adjusted according to competence. A problem usually arises when looking for agreement in the choice of verbs to state goals in the application of learning. So that the basic competence and achievement indicators in the outline of the learning program are felt to be not quite what is meant by the compilers. So that in a learning process it is necessary to always hold an assessment or evaluation so that a teacher can obtain complete data on the progress of the students' abilities. In addition, evaluation must also be able to describe students' abilities in three domains, namely: cognitive, affective and psychomotor. The purpose of this paper is to attempt to describe the object of assessment in the concept of the 2013 curriculum. Through the literature review, it was found that the object of assessment in the application of the 2013 curriculum contained cognitive, affective and psychomotor theories which all integrated with one another. In a more structured manner the assessment object which includes cognitive, affective and psychomotor in its application in the 2013 curriculum describes the characteristics starting during the teaching and learning process in the hope that before we understand a concept, we must remember it first, before we apply it we must first understand it. Before we analyze, we have to apply it first. Before we evaluate, we have to analyze first. Before we can create or create something, then we have to remember, understand, apply, analyze and evaluate

Broadband Internet and Income Inequality

Abstract Digital technologies like the Internet can affect income inequality through increased demand for employment in manual and abstract jobs and reduced demand for employment in routine jobs. In this paper, we combine city-level income distribution and jobs data with broadband data from France to investigate the impact of broadband Internet access on income inequality. Using an instrumental variable estimation strategy, we find that broadband Internet reduces income inequality through increased employment in manual jobs. These effects increase with the availability of skilled workers and are significant in cities with a large service sector or high-speed Internet access. Further, the diffusion of broadband Internet comes with relatively greater benefits in low-income cities compared to high-income cities. Several robustness checks support these findings.

Critical philology and Dante’s Commedia: A couple of thoughts and a few examples

Not only literary students, but also well-known scholars share the idea that the reconstruction of a text is a routine job which leaves little room for creativity. After some 40 years during which I have edited or prepared the edition of works of Machiavelli ( Discorso intorno alla nostra lingua), Pietro Aretino ( Cortegiana) and Torquato Tasso ( Aminta), and 17 years devoted to the textual transmission and the text of Dante’s Commedia, I think that, except for the first phases of the job, textual editing requires almost constant critical thought and interpretation. I shall present a little series of examples, mostly from Dante’s Commedia, with cases ranging from decisions in the realm of accidentals to rather complicated choices among competing substantial readings and to the risky enterprise of emendation against all the witnesses of the work. While these examples can give an idea of the novelty of some solutions of my forthcoming edition (the introduction and Inferno will appear in the summer of 2021), in my view, they seem to confirm the opinion of the great classical philologist Giorgio Pasquali, for whom textual criticism isn’t mechanical; it is methodical.

Reporting under fear and threats: the deadly cost of being a journalist in Pakistan and India

The journalists’ right to perform their watchdog role and to do their routine jobs without fear of being killed, kidnapped, harassed, and attacked is a topic of utmost importance for freedom of the media and freedom of expression. However, in the past decade, journalists’ killings across the globe indicate that journalism is no more a safe profession. Noticeably, the Asia-Pacific region is the third worst violator of media freedom in the world. While the level of media freedom and journalists’ safety is not better in the Middle East and the North African regions, the Asia-Pacific region stands out because it is home to the two of the top ten worst countries for journalists’ killings over the past 25 years, namely: Pakistan and India. Therefore, drawing on the system theory, this study aims to investigate the journalists’ lived experiences of diverse safety risks in Pakistan and India. To accomplish this aim, this study uses the qualitative methods of document reviews and in-depth interviews. Besides, this study uses thematic analysis to analyse the gathered data. The analyses of journalists’ lived experiences of safety risks reveal a stark systemic failure to protect them and safeguard their right to freedom of expression in these two countries.

Automation, digitalization, and changes in occupational structures in the automobile industry in Germany, Japan, and the United States: a brief history from the early 1990s until 2018

Abstract A major concern in the current public discussion is rapidly accelerating automation and in particular the use of robots. Many experts and researchers see it as a driver of employment losses hitting in particular so called routine jobs. The present study challenges this perspective. It examines two central questions: First, what approaches to automation and digitalization have been pursued in the automotive industry in Germany, Japan, and the United States? Second, how have employment and its occupational composition in the automotive industry developed in the three countries? The first part of the study focuses on the evolution of automation and digitalization approaches in the automotive industry from the early 1990s until today. It combines a qualitative analysis of press articles and a quantitative evaluation of the development of the stock of industrial robots from 1993 to 2018 based on the statistics of the International Federation of Robotics. The second part of the study focuses on the change in employment structures using occupational statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (US), the Federal Employment Agency (Germany), and the Statistics Bureau of Japan. The results of the study question the perception of an automation-related threat to employment and especially to production employment. At the same time, they highlight differences between automation and digitalization approaches in Germany, Japan, and the United States as well as different paths of change in employment structures.

Routine-Biased Technological Change and Declining Employment Rate of Immigrants

We find that routine-biased technological change decreases the employment-to-population ratio of foreign-born population over the last three decades (1980–2010). This impact is greater for foreign-born population with lower English proficiency. As computerization and automation substitute for workers in routine occupations, switching from routine jobs to non-routine cognitive jobs may be more challenging for foreign-born workers than for native workers.

Investigation of Surrogate Performance Related Tests for Fatigue Cracking of Asphalt Pavements

This paper studies the relationship between laboratory measurements of fatigue performance and fracture performance of conventional asphalt mixtures, asphalt mixtures with reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP), and rubberized asphalt mixtures. The existing four-point bending (4PB) test was developed to evaluate the fatigue performance of asphalt pavements; however, it is not necessarily appropriate for use in routine job mix formula approval and is too slow and expensive for quality control/quality assurance (QC/QA). In this paper, the semi-circular bending test and indirect tensile asphalt cracking test (IDEAL-CT) were evaluated for their potential to serve as a simple and fast surrogate fatigue performance related test for QC/QA on routine projects and routine mix design. Multiple representative fracture parameters were obtained from the Illinois flexibility index test and the IDEAL-CT. The coefficient of variation revealed that the lowest variability from both tests was in fracture strength. In addition, the linear regression analysis between fracture parameters and fatigue performance indicated that slopes, fracture toughness, and strength from fracture tests have good correlations with the initial flexural stiffness from 4PB tests, while 4PB initial stiffness is well correlated with fatigue life. The direct correlation between fracture properties and fatigue life was not as good. The fracture parameter “strength” also showed the capability of discriminating among asphalt materials with low RAP content.

Experimental and Modeling Analyses of Human Motion Across the Static Magnetic Field of an MRI Scanner.

It is established that human movements in the vicinity of a permanent static magnetic field, such as those in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners induce electric fields in the human body; this raises potential severe risks of health to radiographers and cleaners exposed routinely to these fields in MRI rooms. The relevant directives and parameters, however, are based on theoretical models, and accurate studies on the simulation of the effects based on human movement data obtained in real conditions are still lacking. Two radiographers and one cleaner, familiar with MRI room activities and these directives, were gait analyzed during the execution of routine job motor tasks at different velocities. Full body motion was recorded in a gait laboratory arranged to reproduce the workspace of a room with an MRI full-body scanner. Body segments were tracked with clusters of at least three markers, from which position and velocity of the centroids were calculated. These were used as input in an established computer physical model able to map the stray field in an MRI room. The spatial peak values of the calculated electric field induced by motion of the head and of the entire body during these tasks, for both the health and sensory effects, were found smaller than the thresholds recommended by the European directives, for both 1.5 T and 3.0 T MRI. These tasks therefore seem to guarantee the safety of MRI room operators according to current professional good practice for exposure risks. Physical modeling and experimental measures of human motion can also support occupational medicine.

Automation and public support for workfare

Automation has permeated workplaces and threatens labour in the production process. Concurrently, European governments have expanded workfare which imposes stringent conditions and sanctions on unemployed workers after the onset of austerity. We explore how automation risk affects workfare support. Recent research finds that most routine workers ‘survive’ in their routine jobs. Despite avoiding unemployment, routine workers may face the threat of status decline as automation erodes the value of routine work. They may respond by differentiating themselves from lower-ranked social groups such as unemployed workers. Such boundary drawing may manifest views that the unemployed are less deserving of welfare. We thus posit that routine workers may support workfare to assuage their fears of status decline. We further explore if worsening economic hardship, proxied as rising unemployment rates over time, increases their support for workfare. We conducted pooled and multilevel analyses using data from the European Social Survey. We find that routine workers significantly support workfare. We also find that routine workers support workfare when economic hardship worsens, but oppose it when conditions ameliorate. Findings suggest that status threat is an important channel by which automation risk may affect workfare support, but its impact depends on social context, hence yielding country-differences. Worsening economic hardship may exacerbate routine workers’ status decline fears, and intensify their harsh views against unemployed workers. Automation risk may thus have a greater impact on workfare support under such conditions. Policymakers can use these findings to assess how workfare may be publicly received and under various economic conditions.

Digital Healthy Lifestyle Application for UUM Computer User

<span>A computer is a vital tool for UUM community in doing routine jobs and activities. Spending many hours using a computer without breaks can cause bad effect on users’ health. Inappropriate computer use can cause muscle and joint pain, overuse injuries of the shoulder, arm, wrist or hand, and eyestrain. Fortunately, this pain and misery can be avoided with only a few simple routines. Therefore, a short break from using a computer is necessary. The break could be filled with a short and simple exercise. Physical exercise can provide many benefits to individual and organization. Besides improving the productivity of the organization, physical exercise also can help staff and students to be more focused, stay alert, feel motivated, energetic, and have less stress. In response to this, this paper introduces a digital health application to create health awareness among the UUM community. The methods employed in the study are a preliminary investigation, requirement gathering and analysis, prototype development, and prototype validation. From the requirement analysis phase, 11 criteria were gathered and applied in designing the Digital Healthy Lifestyle Application prototype. Then it was validated by the content and user interface experts. The experts responded positively towards the application.</span>

A Safety Factor Method for Reliability-Based Component Design

Abstract Reliability-based design (RBD) employs optimization to identify design variables that satisfy the reliability requirement. For many routine component design jobs that do not need optimization, however, RBD may not be applicable, especially for those design jobs which are performed manually or with a spreadsheet. This work develops a modified RBD approach to component design so that the reliability target can be achieved by conducting traditional component design repeatedly using a deterministic safety factor. The new component design is based on the first-order reliability method (FORM), which iteratively assigns the safety factor during the design process until the reliability requirement is satisfied. In addition to several iterations of deterministic component design, the other additional work is the calculation of the derivatives of the design margin with respect to the random input variables. The proposed method can be used for a wide range of component design applications. For example, if a deterministic component design is performed manually or with a spreadsheet, so is the reliability-based component design. Three examples are used to demonstrate the practicality of the new design method.

Employment structure in China from 1990 to 2015

Using nationally representative samples from population census and mini-census of China, this study analyzes important employment dynamics in China from 1990 to 2015. The share of routine manual jobs decreased significantly, from 57% to 32%. The share of routine cognitive jobs as well as that of adults not working increased significantly, from 8% to 19%, and from 16% to 31%, respectively. However, the share of non-routine jobs did not change significantly. Our decomposition analysis reveals the composition effect resulting from the change in the composition of population demographics, the propensity effect from change in the probability of people with given demographic characteristics sorting into different employment categories, and the interaction effect of the co-movement of demographic group size changes and propensity changes given demographic characteristics. For the decline in routine manual jobs, each of these three effects contributes 68%, 66%, and −34%, respectively. Meanwhile, for the rise in routine cognitive jobs, each effect is 16%, 74%, and 11%, respectively. Finally, for the rise in the not-working population, each effect is 7%, 93%, and 0.3%, respectively.

IMPLEMENTATION OF GENETIC ALGORITHM IN THE CURRENT SCHEDULING SYSTEM

Scheduling courses is a routine job in academic activities at a college. In its implementation, the scheduling process is not easy to do because many factors need to be considered, several factors that are considered, such as the willingness of lecturers to teach, the availability of classrooms. Besides that, it is also necessary to pay attention to the number of classes in each subject. Course scheduling is a combination of courses, days, time, lecture space, and consideration of lecturers' willingness to teach. To solve the course scheduling problem, a system that can handle the scheduling process is needed. The method that can be used to solve this problem is to use the Genetic Algorithm approach. The genetic algorithm is a scheduling algorithm that can combine lecture time and space automatically by applying a natural or gene selection system. Based on the research that has been done, the genetic algorithm can solve scheduling problems quickly, which only takes 15 seconds for 78 classes and uses as many as 16 chromosomes. Also, the fitness value of all chromosomes is 0, this means that the scheduling results obtained are optimal.

Workplace health promotion interventions for Australian workers with intellectual disability.

Workplace health promotion (WHP) and the general wellbeing of workers in the Australian workforce should be a priority for all management. Our study argues that management support for workers with an intellectual disability (WWID) can make a difference to their health promotion and ultimately their participation in the workforce. We adopt a qualitative approach, through semi-structured interviews with 22 managers, across various organizations, to examine their perspectives around the WHP of WWID. We integrate the key values of WHP; rights for health, empowerment for health and participation for health (Spencer, Corbin and Miedema, Sustainable development goals for health promotion: a critical frame analysis, Health Promot Int 2019;34:847-58) into the four phases of WHP interventions; needs assessment, planning, implementation and evaluation (Bortz and Döring, Research Methods and Evaluation for Human and Social Scientists, Heidelberg: Springer, 2006) and examine management perspectives (setting-based approach) on WHP of WWID. Where this integration had taken place, we found some evidence of managers adopting more flexible, innovative and creative approaches to supporting the health promotion of WWID. This integration seemed to drive continuous improvement for WWID health promotion at the workplace. We also found evidence that some organizations, such an exemplar film company, even over deliver in terms of supporting WWID needs by encouraging their capabilities in film making interventions, whilst others are more direct in their support by matching skills to routine jobs. Our approach demonstrates that incorporating key WHP values into the four-phase WHP framework is critical for the effective health promotion of WWID.