Urban Labor Market Research Articles

Human Capital and the Upward Occupational Mobility of Rural Migrant Workers in China

Research on the human capital and occupational mobility of Chinese rural migrant workers often focuses on how formal education is linked to upward mobility, and rarely accounts for the heterogeneity in the origin occupations. Conditioning on origin occupations, this study uses multivariable logistic regression models to explore the relationship between four human capital factors including formal education, professional training, professional certificates and the knowledge of foreign languages, and the likelihood of upward occupational mobility among rural migrant workers in the urban labor market in China. The findings confirmed the overall positive associations between human capital and upward occupational mobility, net of family background and demographic characteristics. Nevertheless, heterogeneous marginal effects exist for different human capital factors. Formal education is associated with the upward mobility of migrant workers whose first occupations are professional technicians. Foreign language proficiency is associated with the upward mobility for those with an origin occupation of industrial production personnel or business and service personnel. There is evidence for cohort differences, that foreign language proficiency is associated with the upward mobility of the older cohort with an occupational origin of industrial production personnel, and of the younger cohort with an occupational origin of business personnel, whereas high school degree only matters for the older cohort. This study contributes understanding to the mobility and stratification literature by: 1) distinguishing between four human capital factors including formal education, professional training, certificates, and foreign language proficiency, and revealing the heterogeneity in their relationship with upward mobility; 2) providing an innovative empirical approach to understand the relationship between human capital and occupational mobility that accounts for the origin and destination occupations of mobility; 3) contributing a life course perspective by revealing the link between origin and destination occupations, between education and employment, between the younger and older cohort, and between structural barriers (or incentives) and individual agency for human capital investment.

Decomposing the Gender Wage Gap in the Urban Labor Market in Kenya

Abstract Legislation and regulation have been effective in reducing the gender wage gap in developed countries; however, the gap still exists globally, and progress towards narrowing the gap has been unacceptably slow even in regions where it is improving. This study presents the analysis of gender wage gap in Kenya’s urban labor market by using the World Bank Skills Towards Employability and Productivity Survey (WBSTEPS). This study employed Mincer earnings regressions with Heckman selection correction and the Blinder-Oaxaca and Neumark decomposition procedures to answer the research questions. The results of the wage determination and participation in the labor market show that there is no selectivity-bias problem. Personal characteristics such as education and age, as well as work-related characteristics, are important factors in determining earnings. The magnitude of the gender wage gap varies across the wage distribution, and the results of the wage decomposition reveal that women in urban Kenya earn 84.5-to-86% of men’s earnings. The earnings gap is overwhelmingly due to differences in returns to endowments, which account for between 70% and 94.7% of the total earnings gap. Admittedly, the study found evidence of discrimination against women in the returns to endowments, but also observed pronounced favoritism towards men. However, discrimination against women is more pronounced than favoritism towards men. Addressing the gender wage gap in Kenya requires a multifaceted approach that tackles both systemic biases against women and structural barriers that hinder women from accessing equal opportunities in education, training, and career advancement and government policies that minimize favoritism towards men.

Revealing the New Nexus in Urban Unemployment Dynamics: The Relationship between Institutional Variables and Long-Term Unemployment in Colombia

Abstract The aim of this study is to assess the impact of various institutional variables on the long-term unemployment rate (LAPU) in the Colombian urban labor market. Vector autoregressive models are estimated using microdata from the Great Integrated Household Survey (GEIH), which has national coverage. Monthly data were analyzed for the 13 major capital cities and their metropolitan areas, as well as for the group of 11 intermediate capital cities, resulting in a total of 24 main urban labor markets in Colombia. The dataset includes unionized individuals, individuals with verbal and written contracts, non-labor income, unemployed individuals with subsidies, and individuals receiving severance payments. The results indicate that the growth in the number of unionized employees and non-labor income contributes to increasing the persistence in the duration of unemployment in Colombia. A key finding is that a positive growth in the ratio – gap between individuals with written contracts versus verbal contracts reduces LAPU. This provides evidence of how reducing information asymmetries in the Colombian labor market can improve labor market outcomes and contribute to medium- and long-term social welfare in Colombian urban centers.

Inequality and spatial mismatch in the urban labor market: Evidence for the Curitiba metropolitan region, Brazil

Accessibility plays a fundamental role in improving urban economic equity, especially for disadvantaged communities. In many metropolitan areas of Brazil, accessibility relies on infrastructure unequally distributed, creating barriers to access opportunities in the urban labor market. This paper aims to identify sources of spatial mismatch and measure its effects on the labor market of the Curitiba Metropolitan Region (CMR), in Brazil. First, we measured the spatial imbalances of households and jobs by income classes and their effects on the spatial dissimilarity of accessibility to job opportunities. Second, we use econometric tools to evaluate how accessibility to the formal job sector affects individual earnings in the CMR labor market by wage quartile. We find evidence of strong spatial segregation for the poorest individuals from public transit network and from the formal job sector. The econometric results show there was roughly no accessibility premium for individual earnings for the poorest workers and positive effects for the richest workers in the CMR labor market. This set of empirical evidence suggest a spatial concentration of urban amenities that enhance economic inequality for the CMR.

‘Morphing between the margins’: how youth make a living across multiple spaces in South Africa and beyond

ABSTRACT Young South Africans regularly generate livelihoods on the move, as they morph across a mainstream economic field and two translocal sub-fields. While a field implies sets of relations operating under common conditions, translocal sub-fields are local spaces of exchange and practice, where resources are utilised, in a relationship with other linked spaces. In South Africa, the mainstream economic field largely consists of an urban labour market with some good jobs and unskilled labour. Alongside it a rural sub-field consists of farm and off-farm activities, reciprocal exchange and state grants. Finally, on the outskirts of urban areas a township sub-field consists of young people hustling resources in the informal sector. After describing how mobile young South Africans make a living across these spaces, I show how this case is both similar and different to other post-colonial contexts with substantial informal economic sectors like India and Brazil. In these places, youth strive to make a living by accumulating resources as they move across spaces that include, but transcend, the labour market. A particular form of mobile, global South youth livelihood generation occurs across the mainstream capitalist economy and informal urban and rural contexts, where economic relations remain largely embedded in social life.

Caste of Marginality and Migration in Bihar

In the world of ‘global capital—peripheral labour’, multiple strategies are employed to accumulate labouring bodies to augment accumulation, the lifeline of capitalism. Relations of inequalities have historically helped capitalism to accumulate and thrive. Growth in India and its accompanied en masse informalisation of labour is located at the intersection of caste, gender and migration. Foregrounding the cultural political economy of agrarian poverty, migration and informalisation of labour, we underline the criticality of caste in reproducing a labour force that is perennially insecure, unsettled and unorganised. Based on a qualitative study in rural Araria, Bihar, we argue that informalisation of labour is institutionalisation of vulnerability, which is sustained and reproduced through caste-based social relations in. Due to the wages in kind, repressive tenancy system and low productivity, indebtedness remains an annual necessity for the lowered caste workers and tillers even when the lowered 1 castes move beyond the bounds of the village and into the wider informal economy, their lack of social capital and adverse incorporation in the urban labour market keep them off the benefits of migration and urban growth.

The Impact of Minimum Wage Policies on Income Inequality: Evidence from China

This paper examines the impact of China's minimum wage policy on income inequality. By analysing micro-survey data from China's urban labour market, this study uses microeconometric methods to assess the level and implementation of the minimum wage and its multiple impacts on the employment effect, the labour supply effect, the spillover effect, the inequality effect and the income distribution effect. It was found that the minimum wage policy, while raising the wage level of low-income groups, had a significant negative impact on the income of workers whose income levels fell within the 150 per cent to 250 per cent range of the previous period's minimum wage, suggesting that the minimum wage policy did not have a uniform effect in reducing the income gap.

Wage Bargaining Power of Internal Migrant Workers: Evidence from Urban Labor Market in China

This study analyses the wage bargaining power of employers and internal migrant workers in the urban labor market in China using a two-tiered SFA model. The findings indicate that bargaining power decreases the observed wage relative to the benchmark wage which is associated with worker’s actual productivity. The availability of migrant labor is identified to be a key variable in the wage bargaining process. This study reveals that the migrant workers who obtain jobs via informal job search methods stand in a weak bargaining position relative to those using formal search methods which is consistent with limited choices hypothesis. Additionally, the migrant workers in the manufacturing and construction industries or producing and processing occupations extract surplus nearly identical to other groups.

WHEN CLIMATE CHANGES, SO DOES VIOLENCE: EXAMINING THE LINK BETWEEN WEATHER AND CRIME IN PERNAMBUCO-NORTHEAST, BRAZIL

This paper examines the impact of weather shocks on crime in Pernambuco-Northeast, one of the states most affected by climate disasters in the Brazilian semi-arid region. We show that precipitation and temperature shocks in the form of droughts have a significant impact on the increase of rates of intentional lethal violent crimes (ILVC), property crimes (PC), and homicides. The effects of precipitation fluctuations in the form of droughts persist beyond the agricultural season and in the medium-term, and vary according to municipal and criminological characteristics. Moreover, adverse weather conditions (e.g., droughts) have a greater impact on income-related crimes. Consistent with this evidence, we find that the persistent response of crime rates to adverse weather conditions is driven by negative shocks to rural income, followed by a deterioration in overall economic activity, urban labor market conditions, and the government’s ability to provide public goods. The patterns we identify align with a relationship between weather and crime explained by reduced opportunity costs associated with criminal activity. Regarding policy recommendations, our findings suggest that local governments should prioritize investments in water infrastructure, agricultural irrigation, expansion of water coverage, and conservation of forested areas. These measures can contribute to climate adaptation and mitigate the economic impact of weather shocks on crime.

Do Drivers of Labor Force Participation Differ for Male and Female in the Rural and Urban Labor Markets in India?

The labor force participation rate of women in India has decreased despite economic growth, which has limited the advancement of their rights unlike in most other countries. This paper examines the determinants of labor force participation by gender in rural and urban areas using a probit model with data from the India Human Development Survey (IHDS) for 2011–2012 to analyze the factors that restrict workforce participation. The estimation results are presented below. First, the marital status of males, both rural and urban, has a significant impact on their participation in the workforce due to family support. In contrast, females face multiple restrictions based on marital, caste and religion, demonstrating that sociocultural factors have limited their participation regardless of regional factors. Second, in rural areas, the educational years of female workers negatively affect labor participation, but the constraints of marriage are weaker than in urban areas. Women in lower castes participate more in the rural labor force, which is interpreted as a result of their livelihood in the industrial structure consisting of agriculture. On the other hand, the caste system negatively affects female participation in urban areas. Finally, these results indicate that the low-labor participation of females is the result of a complicated process influenced by various factors, including regional effects and patriarchal cultural values in India. Therefore, it is necessary to provide employment opportunities and encourage economic incentives for more women to enter the labor market spontaneously, considering regional effects in policies, in order for women to emerge as one group of social leaders.

Socioeconomic differentiation among food delivery workers in China: The case of Nanjing

In China, the booming platform economy has reshaped the urban labor market, offering entry-level opportunities to urban residents, particularly rural migrant workers. Unlike traditional sectors characterized by occupational segregation between rural migrants and urban locals, platform-based gig jobs, such as food delivery and ride-hailing, have attracted both groups, creating a diverse labor force. This paper utilizes data from a recent questionnaire survey and face-to-face interviews with food delivery workers in Nanjing to investigate socioeconomic disparities among urban locals, urban migrants, and rural migrants all engaged in the same occupation. Among these groups, rural migrant workers have the lowest socioeconomic status and worst living conditions, often perceiving food delivery as a last-resort means of livelihood. Conversely, most urban locals and urban migrants turn to food delivery to supplement their family incomes or as a temporary job while pursuing other career opportunities. Furthermore, both rural and urban migrant workers experience a higher degree of job insecurity compared to urban locals. These disparities in socioeconomic status and subjective well-being among the three groups within the food delivery labor force influence their divergent life prospects in terms of career paths and settlement intentions.

Does geographical exposure to language learning centres affect language skills and labour market outcomes in a bilingual city?

In this paper, we investigate the effects of geographical exposure to local language training centres in a bilingual urban labour market, the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona, exploiting the implementation of a language policy that provided publicly subsidized language courses for adults. Our variable of interest consists in a measure of spatial availability of language schools that captures potential exposure and its expansion over time. First, we focus on the formation of local language skills, adopting a reduced-form approach. Our results indicate that exposure to language learning opportunities has a positive but quantitatively modest effect on local language skills, since individuals residing in neighbourhoods with a higher supply of language centres are more likely to be able to speak and write in Catalan. The effect is very robust to falsification exercises and several sensitivity checks and is driven by younger individuals, and especially by those who were born in Catalonia. Second, we analyse whether accessibility to language centres also affects employment, working hours, employment sector, and occupation. Our results indicate that, although skills in Catalan are positively and significantly associated with improved labour market outcomes, spatial accessibility to language centres is not directly related to any of them. This lack of effect is possibly due to the fact that the impact of geographical exposure on language skills is too small in size to improve performance in the local labour market.

The relevance of smart cities’ features in exploring urban labour market resilience: the specificity of post-transition economies

ABSTRACT This paper assesses the relationship between the urban labour market’s resilience and urban smartness for the European Union’s metropolitan areas in Central and Eastern Europe. The urban labour market’s resilience is evaluated by building an aggregate indicator using five variables that measure the specific characteristics of a labour market for post-transition economies, while 32 relevant characteristics of smart cities are used in assessing urban smartness for these economies. The results show that the characteristics considered to define a smart city are associated with resilient urban labour markets, particularly for metropolitan regions that surround capital cities.

Employment Characteristics of Regular Salaried Employees in Urban Maharashtra

Studies on the labour market in India are increasingly debating the issue of caste-based discrimination in employment. However, there are few studies addressing the issue of regular salaried employees in urban labour market, except in the context of reservation policy. Due to the reservation policy, the issue of the representation of the schedule caste, scheduled tribes and other backward class has been addressed to a particular extent. In this context, this article attempts to analyse the status of schedule caste in employment and unemployment, participation in different occupations and industries groups, job security and social security benefits in urban labour market Maharashtra. The descriptive analysis clearly shows that a significant employment difference exists between regular salaried employees belonging to Hindu High Caste (HHC) and Schedule Caste (SC). One of the reasons that comes out for the substantial gap is the higher level of unemployment rate among educated SCs as compared to HHCs. The SCs have less representation in the high earning occupations, but contrary to this, they have high representation in the low wage-earning occupations. The share of informal SCs is high as compared to HHCs in the private sector in the state and NSS regions during 2004–2005 to 2018–2019.

Is psychologically vulnerable rural-to-urban migrants' mental health further at stake under China's tightened COVID-19 measures: how should the government respond?

There is a well-documented scholarly discourse on how the COVID-19 outbreak adversely affects the mental health of Chinese nationals. However, there is little evidence revealing how the public health crisis negatively influenced the mental health of rural-to-urban migrants in China. The relevant literature argues that rural-to-urban migrant workers and their dependents have been experiencing discrimination, exclusion, and stigmatization in the urban labor market and social space, thereby jeopardizing their mental health to a large extent. However, whether the COVID-19 outbreak and its associated consequences further compounded rural-to-urban migrant workers' mental health has rarely been discussed. Since 2010, the Chinese government has emphasized the importance of promoting positive mental health. Without identifying how COVID-19 specifically imposed mental health challenges on rural-to-urban migrant cohorts, Chinese policymakers cannot effectively and efficiently address the dilemmas faced by such vulnerable groups. The significant rural-to-urban migrant population (i.e. 291 million), alongside their disposition to encounter social and psychological challenges, prompts the urgency to develop this narrative essay to examine whether their mental health burdens worsened during the pandemic. The author also discusses remedies for the worsened mental issues faced by migrant cohorts, and recommends policies that local Chinese governments should adopt to mitigate the mental health burdens encountered by rural-to-urban migrants.

The Lure of the City

This article questions the impact of urbanization on crime rates by studying Amsterdam migrants in front of the correctional court between 1850 and 1905 and connecting the historiography on crime and migration. The data shows no clear link between urbanization and a rise in crime, but it does reveal the role of external factors in the prosecution of specific crimes. The crisis experienced by the urban labour market in the late 1870 and 1880s had a direct impact on Amsterdam crime rates: although Amsterdam could initially integrate low-skilled workers in its labour market, the situation became unsustainable after a few years. It led to an increase in the prosecution of vagrancy and begging offences, which were committed first and foremost by Dutch unemployed or unskilled migrant workers. This article thus shows the importance of considering migrants in crime history not as a homogenous group but as different groups, each with its own support networks, and influenced differently by the micro- and macro-economic developments of the nineteenth century.

Shoulders and shadows of giants: intra-regional distribution of the digital industry in Germany

ABSTRACT This paper investigates digital firm birth activity in municipalities in the urban hinterland of core cities in Germany. It conducts panel fixed-effect regressions for monocentric and polycentric urban labour market regions covering the years 1995–2017. The digital industry’s regional distribution is shaped significantly by the closest core cities: municipalities in monocentric urban regions (MURs) profit from urban population growth and universities’ general knowledge. Municipalities in polycentric urban regions (PURs), however, are affected by industry-specific externalities, that is, an above-average growth in the share of firm birth of their closest urban cores. Overall, agglomeration externalities experience spatial decay relative to the core size with all regions benefiting from their own industry-enhancing urbanization externalities as captured by population growth and universities.

Moving to ‘Bei–Shang–Guang’? Internal migration, local hukou barriers and labour market outcomes among college graduates in China

AbstractBeijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, as the major metropolitan areas in China, offer good opportunities for economic and social mobility for in‐migrants. As such, these four locations have become the primary employment destinations for recent college graduates. Meanwhile, these cities have the most stringent hukou policies nationwide, which play a key role in the urban labour market segmentation between local residents and in‐migrants. Using three waves of data from a nationally representative survey, the China College Student Survey (2010, 2013, and 2015), this paper, for the first time, examined whether Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen have emerged as an ‘upward social class escalator region’ for young adults in China. After accounting for observed demographic and human capital characteristics and migrant selectivity, migrating into Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen has been found to be positively associated with earnings attainment, and the economic benefit from relocation is greater than that experienced by migrants elsewhere in the system. However, in‐migrants to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen have fewer opportunities to enter government organisations and public enterprises. These results cast doubt on the potential for Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen to act as escalators for individuals wishing to achieve all‐around upwards social mobility in China's urban labour market. The local hukou barrier may still be a salient factor in shaping migrants' labour market outcomes in China. This study contributes to existing knowledge on escalator theory by providing empirical evidence from an emerging market country, China. More importantly, it shed light on the role of location (such as large urban centres) in the complicated relationship between social mobility and migration.

Creation and Destruction of Jobs in Urban Labour Market: Role of Gender, Caste and Religion in India.

This study analyses labour market transitions from job to jobless or jobless to job by using Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS)of India in urban labour market by applying first-order Markov process in constructing transition matrices and panel logit regression model using personal level information from the PLFS in India for 2019-20. While education is assumed to be the most important factor influencing the process of transitions in the labour market, the circumstance variables like gender, caste and religion are expected to have significant effects on it in a country like India. The empirical results show a significant difference in labour market transitions between men and women. The movement of workers between job status was very low and the major part of the transition occurred in the form of job losses for each type of workers both among men and women and also among all working age group and young age group.

Effect of COVID-19 Pandemic on Employment and Earning in Urban India during the First Three Months of Pandemic Period: An Analysis with Unit-Level Data of Periodic Labour Force Survey.

Urbanisation has accelerated the pace of development throughout the world. Big cities provide employment and livelihood for workers because of which workers have always migrated from rural areas to cities. However, in India, most of the migrant workers are absorbed in the low-paid and low-skilled jobs in the widespread informal sector. With the outbreak of COVID-19, lockdown was declared suddenly without any notice in India during the last week of March 2019 and most of the urban informal sector workers suddenly lost their jobs, and since they had no protection, they werepushed into poverty. Detailed analysis of such losses is of utmost importance so that perfectly appropriate remedial measures can be taken by the government. Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS)report of 2019-20 has analysed the situation of labour market in India for four quarters from July 2019 to June 2020. Therefore, the last quarter of the data will give us the valuable information about the urban labour market during the first three months of the COVID-19 pandemic period. This study analyses the possible reasons behind decline in monthly earnings and labour market participation of urban people in India during the period of outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, i.e. during the period from April 2020 to June 2020, using the data of fourth quarter from each of the PLFSs of 2017-18, 2018-19 and 2019-20 since they have identical seasonal conditions. We have used cross-tabulation method to find out employment and unemployment rates of people inurban areas according to gender and type of employment for the period, from July to June, for the years 2018, 2019 and 2020. We have also tried to find the reasons behind the decline in income of workers during the first three months of the pandemic period, i.e. during the fourth quarter of 2019-20, compared to the fourth quarter of 2017-18 and that of 2018-19 using the Mincerian wage equation. Our empirical results have shown that urban workers in India have lost jobs and suffered from significant decline in income during the first three months of the COVID-19 pandemic period in almost all types of employment.