Working to get fired? Unemployment benefits and employment duration

In many countries, jobseekers are entitled to unemployment benefits (UBs) only if they have previously worked a minimum period of time. This institutional feature creates a sharp change in the disutility from unemployment at UB eligibility and may distort the duration of jobs. In this paper, we evaluate this eligibility effect using a regression discontinuity approach. Our evidence is based on longitudinal social security data from Portugal, where jobseekers are required to work a relatively long period to collect UBs. We find that monthly transitions from employment to unemployment increase by 10% as soon as the eligibility condition is met. This result is driven entirely by transitions to subsidised unemployment, which increase by 20%, as non-subsidised unemployment is not affected. The effects are even larger for the unemployed with high UB replacement ratios or those who meet the eligibility condition from multiple short employment spells. These transitions deserve greater attention from UB agencies and public employment services.     

Welfare reforms and the Refugee Resettlement Strategy: an opportunity to achieve meaningful employment outcomes for New Zealanders from refugee backgrounds?

Despite employment being consistently identified as a key factor in successful refugee resettlement, people from refugee backgrounds in Aotearoa New Zealand are overrepresented in unemployment statistics. Of those who do gain employment, few secure work that is adequately remunerated and commensurate with the person's skills and qualifications. This paper explores whether the two recent government-driven initiatives, the welfare reforms and the New Zealand Refugee Resettlement Strategy, provide an opportunity to address these issues. Based on previous research, the authors identify the main employment barriers facing people from refugee backgrounds. They argue that while the welfare reforms and the Refugee Resettlement Strategy are underpinned by a desire to see more people in employment, for real change to occur, an integrated holistic approach is needed. This approach needs to include additional resourcing for government-funded specialist one-on-one employment programmes that are available in all regions where refugees are resettled. These programmes combined with access to fully funded English language tuition and work experience and internship opportunities would help reduce the barriers people from refugee backgrounds face when seeking employment.     

Domestic violence,housing and employment: Workers' perspectives on employment assistance in supported accommodation

In response to contemporary understanding about the association between financial security and women's ability to escape domestic violence and homelessness, this paper reports on a small scale pilot study conducted with workers from generalist homelessness services and domestic violence‐supported accommodation services in South Australia on responding to women's requests for assistance to seek employment. Workers from both accommodation service types advised that approximately one third of women at their services asked for employment‐related assistance at the point of service intake or soon after. Although relatively few women received employment support following their requests, assistance was four times more likely at the generalist homelessness services than the domestic violence services. Agency priorities, philosophies and workers' assessments of women's capacity to engage in employment were cited as reasons for not responding to women's employment requests. Women who secured employment prior to service exit, whether helped to do so or not, were perceived as more confident with the prospect of supporting their families independently following exit and more able to secure suitable housing when compared to other women. Follow‐up and outreach visits indicated that women who worked had a stronger sense of financial security, housing stability and social connectedness, but that maintaining employment following service exit was difficult.     

How is ‘welfare‐to‐work’ shaped by contingencies of economy,welfare policy and human capital?

This research weighed the impact made by the economy, welfare policy and human capital on unemployed welfare mothers in the USA. Specifically, it asked how welfare mothers' employment status, poverty status, and enrolment for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) are affected by these three factors. Longitudinal data from the Survey of Income Program Participation (SIPP) provided a sample of TANF mothers. The SIPP data shed light on modes of economic adaptation exhibited by these mothers. Event history analysis was applied to the data (for years 1996–2000), and results were obtained showing that restrictive welfare policies combined with high unemployment can boost the number of working poor Americans by severing them from TANF. Human capital contingencies – which here comprised development of the sample's occupational skills, work experience and education – helped TANF mothers gain employment and even leave welfare. Some were able to do so and live above the poverty level. Social support, especially family support, was another factor included in this study that was found to be of some use to unemployed mothers in terms of finding work. Results bear several implications for TANF policy.     

A Capability Approach to Unemployed Young People's Voice and Agency in the Development and Implementation of Employment Activation Policies

In the UK, current approaches to employment activation are primarily concerned with rapid labour market entry, with jobseekers compelled to engage in activities or be sanctioned. The Capability Approach (CA) has been proposed as an alternative framework to measure successful employment activation. It is concerned with what people can do rather than what they actually do, together with their substantive freedom of choice. In applying the CA, attention is drawn to the need for jobseekers to have a voice in the design and implementation of employment activation programmes. Drawing on in‐depth qualitative research, this article uses the CA to explore the voice and agency of unemployed young people (aged 16–24) in the development and implementation of employment activation policies. It analyses how far, and in what ways, young people's ideas, experiences and voices are included in policy development and implementation. Reflections and conclusions are made about how the policy discourse which has stressed the importance of centring services on the needs of users is reflected in employment activation policy.     

Better job prospects or an imperative to ‘just work’? A cross-national study on social investment and women's employment

Social investment policies advocate for more and better jobs by supporting families' work-life balance and investing in human capital. But do they really help to boost employment prospects for women? Earlier literature suggests a positive relationship, but not enough attention has been paid to the type of employment, or to who the actual beneficiaries of these measures are. This article combines ISSP survey data with OECD and national data in a multilevel analysis to determine whether social investment policies benefit female employment, improve job prospects, and apply to all women irrespective of their educational level. We find that training and childcare policies are associated with higher employment levels, however, the claim that social investment increases chances for better job prospects finds little empirical support. These findings suggest that active labour market and childcare policies are associated with more women's employment, but they might still be following a push to ‘just work’.     

It's More Than an M‐shape: The Political Economy of Female Non‐Standard Workers in the Republic of Korea

This study examines the re‐entrance of female workers into the Korean labor market. We highlight that women in their 40s have the highest rate of employment among all female workers and that a large proportion of these women are entering into non‐standard employment. In approaching this question, we examine the political economy of this phenomenon by first discussing the demand side of the Korean labor market using the gendering of the varieties of capitalism argument and then the supply side with the work–life balance argument. When examining re‐entrance into the labor market, women with general skills with lower education and higher education both found it more feasible to re‐enter the labor market as non‐standard workers. While work–life balance is a prominent reason for women's choice of opting out of the labor market, work–life balance choice mattered less for women re‐entering the labor market as non‐standard workers in their 40s and 50s but instead firmly based skill formation mattered more. In addition, the retail service industry is suggested to absorb a large number of female workers with lower skill levels who would have had difficulties in re‐entering other male‐oriented companies.     

Employers' perspectives on benefit conditionality in the UK and Denmark

This article examines the under-explored demand-side of active labour market policies (ALMPs). Based on interview data from a comparative study of the UK and Denmark, the paper analyses employers' perspectives and experiences of ALMPs. In both countries, employers were favourably disposed towards employing unemployed jobseekers but held negative views on conditionality. First, benefit conditionality led to employers receiving large numbers of unsuitable and unfiltered job applications, with associated negative resource impacts. Second, employers perceived this as a product of ‘box ticking' and compliance targets. Finally, employers criticised policy and media rhetoric for focusing solely on the supply-side and for problematizing unemployed candidates. The paper argues that these crucial, but neglected, employer perspectives demonstrate that the current benefit conditionality regime in the UK risks irrevocably ‘tarnishing' candidates, which undermines, rather than enhances, their chances of securing employment through ALMPs. This unique dataset provides further evidence that the current direction of policy requires urgent and radical re-thinking.     

Barriers to finding and maintaining open employment for people with intellectual disability in Australia

Everyone has the right to employment. Work is important for health, well-being, and social, economic, and financial inclusion. However, it is often difficult for people with intellectual disability to find and maintain work, especially in the open labour market. Policy challenges remain about who can access open employment (also sometimes called competitive or supported employment) and how often people with intellectual disability do so. Greater understanding about the barriers that people with intellectual disability encounter when they try to find and keep work in open employment is needed. Drawing on research with 51 people with intellectual disability in Australia, this paper examines the systemic barriers they report to finding and maintaining work in open employment. The findings highlight that the barriers they experience stem from narrow, dismissive, and discouraging attitudes to their work in open employment and from a spectrum of experiences of stigma and discrimination in open workplaces. The paper thus provides new knowledge about reasons that people with intellectual disability may either reject or not continue in open employment and take up less inclusive work options. The paper discusses the implications of the findings, including the need for policy development for attitudinal change, designing more varied roles for employees with intellectual disability, ensuring access to industrial relations protections, and increasing and better regulating and funding requirements on support to people with intellectual disability who are seeking work in open employment.     

Employment status transitions among young adults,with and without disability

Employment is a crucial avenue through which young people with disability can experience material wellbeing and social participation. While the low employment rates of young people with disability are well established, little is known about the stability of employment status – that is, the degree to which individuals remain in or move in and out of employment. This article uses longitudinal data from a large Australian national data set to investigate the transitions between full‐time, part‐time and non‐employment for young people with and without disability. Considerable mobility was found between employment states for both young people with and without disability, with young people with disability more likely than their peers without disability to transition to reduced levels of employment and less likely to transition to increased levels of employment. Social background and contextual factors predicted employment for young people with disability; however, disability represented an additional penalty even after taking these factors into account. Findings suggest a need for social policy targeted specifically towards the barriers to maintaining and increasing employment experienced by young people with disability.     

Expediting youth's entry into employment whilst overlooking precariousness: Flexi‐employability and disciplinary activation in Hong Kong

With an emphasis placed on supply‐side interventions such as skills training and incentives enhancement, active labor market polices (ALMPs) are strongly promoted by international organizations and widely adopted across different welfare regimes to boost employment rates. This article first presents the under‐examined relationship between ALMPs and employment precariousness, which has posed a challenge to the neoliberal notion of employability and activation. Youth‐focused employment policies tend to speed up employment entry whilst downplaying the risk of precariousness and the importance of job quality, and thus further reinforcing the belief that engaging in precarious employment is tolerable if not inevitable. The article then examines the case of Hong Kong, which illustrates that its relatively low rate of youth unemployment may conceal the unfavorable employment conditions confronted by youth. It is argued that the service‐led employment policies and short‐term vocational training define the employability of young workers in terms of labor flexibilities. The coined phase of “flexi‐employability” is characterized by promoting youth's readiness for, and adaptability to, the volatilities and changing demands of the labor market. Arguably, the disciplinary approach to youth activation would only strengthen the work‐first principle by enforcing young people to take up jobs available and leave welfare as soon as possible, but without thoroughly addressing the risks and insecurities generated by the labor market in undermining their well‐being.     

Attitudes toward home‐based employment for mothers of young children: Australian evidence

Kelley CGE, Kelley SMC, Evans MDR, Kelley J. Attitudes toward home‐based employment for mothers of young children: Australian evidence
Int J Soc Welfare 2010: 19: 33–44 © 2008 The Author(s), Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare. People have mixed feelings about paid employment for mothers with young children. This might reflect opposition to women's work per se or, instead, fear that children are harmed by the mother's absence from the home. To find out, we developed new questions differentiating support for or opposition to mothers working for pay depending on whether the employment is home‐based or outside the home. Data from a large representative national sample of Australia (n= 1,324) show that public support for employment is about 30 percentage points greater if the mother works at home. Structural equation analyses show social differences in levels of support. Thus work at home provides a way of increasing labour force participation and earnings for mothers (with the welfare benefits that implies), which is congruent with public opinion.     

Job satisfaction and ‘welfare‐to‐work‘: is any job a good job for Australian single mothers?

This exploratory study sought to assess the job satisfaction of employed Australian single mothers who had mandatory employment participation requirements. In particular, we sought to identify the characteristics of the job and the individual that were closely associated with participant's job satisfaction. Self‐report data on job satisfaction, employment characteristics and parenting stress were collected from 155 employed single mothers. Participant job satisfaction was compared to female Australian population norms and linear regression analyses determined the job‐related and individual predictors of single mothers' job satisfaction. Findings from this exploratory study revealed that single mothers involved in a mandatory welfare‐to‐work program experienced significantly lower job satisfaction than the Australian female population. The individual variable, parental distress, negatively predicted each of the six job satisfaction domains while being employed on a casual basis was inversely associated with three domains (job security, work hours and overall job satisfaction). The Australian government purported that making the transition from welfare to work would improve wellbeing for program participants, under the assumption that ‘any job's a good job‘. However, the relatively low levels of job satisfaction experienced by single mothers in the current study provide little support for this assumption.     

Returning to Normality: Substance Users' Work Histories and Perceptions of Work During and After Recovery

Correspondence to Andreas Cebulla, National Centre for Social Research, 35 Northampton Square, London EC1V 0AX, UK. E-mail: a.cebulla{at}natcen.ac.uk Summary New service provisions designed to improve the employment prospectsof former substance users will enhance the roles and responsibilitiesof Drug Action Teams (DATs), Jobcentre Plus offices and otherproviders and co-ordinators of support services for substanceusers. This paper discusses the findings of a study of 30 currentand former drug and alcohol users, exploring past substanceuse histories and current employment aspirations. The researchinforms new policy initiatives designed to assist substanceusers’ entry or return to work. Differences in presentperceptions of work-readiness were observed, which reflectedusers’ perceptions of the nature of their addiction. Theattribution of blame for the substance dependency to either‘the drug’ or the individual’s psychologywas a critical influence on users’ work-readiness assessments.Work was perceived to benefit recovery from substance dependency.The evidence suggests that substance users’ return towork might be helped by their staged (re-) introduction to thelabour market as well as encouraging the primary labour marketto employ (more) recovering substance users. The research highlightedthe need for joint working between employment services and DATsto help substance users into work and to support their recovery.It also highlighted the need for mutual understanding and recognitionof each collaborator’s expertise.     

The quest for sustainable employment: Challenges faced by young people during the job‐search process

Young people who are unable to find and sustain employment are at risk for long‐term social and economic exclusion. Active labour market policies (ALMPs) addressing the problem of youth unemployment have focused on building the employability skills of young job seekers to expand their employment opportunities. Yet research exploring how young people navigate the job‐search process is limited. Drawing on interviews with young Australian job seekers and their employment consultants, this article addresses the questions of how young people navigate entry into employment through the job‐search process and what challenges they face. The study revealed three common frustrations experienced by the young people during their job‐search: employers' expectations of relevant work experience in the young person's preferred occupation, being required to apply for jobs not aligned with their career aspirations, and the impact of personal factors on their ability to confidently present themselves to prospective employers. The findings highlight the need for ALMPs and employers to facilitate positive employability support mechanisms that will build a stable platform from which young people can build a trajectory towards sustainable employment to reduce long‐term youth unemployment.     

The Policymaker's Dilemma: The Risks and Benefits of a ‘Black Box’ Approach to Commissioning Active Labour Market Programmes

In September 2009, the British Government launched a new employment assistance model called Flexible New Deal. It was soon replaced by Work Programme in 2011. Both prioritized what is often called a ‘black box’ approach to public employment assistance, whereby the government purchaser focuses predominantly on outcomes and does not seek to direct agency operations. Using a study of the orientations and strategies of frontline employment services staff in 2008 and 2012, we seek to enhance understanding of the impact of so‐called ‘black box’ commissioning on key aspects of service delivery. Black box advocates propose that it is a hands‐off approach that allows agencies to be innovative and to improve efficiency. These effects are thought to be due to improved local service quality and greater flexibility to tailor services to individual clients. Critics argue that this increased discretion facilitates under‐servicing of some jobseekers and agency profiteering. These practices are commonly referred to as ‘parking’ and ‘creaming’. In this UK study, we provide evidence of both positive and negative activities associated with black box commissioning. We find some small improvements in flexibility at the frontline, but little to no evidence of increased efficiency as measured by the reported rates of jobseekers moving into work. We also observe an increase in practices associated with creaming and parking. We conclude that improving efficiency and maximizing innovation are not guaranteed by black box commissioning, and that the aim of facilitating increased frontline flexibility, while also minimizing risk, persists as a major policy design tension.     

Personal networks and employment: a study on landless farmers in Yunnan province of China

Abstract

Drastic urbanisation has produced a new marginalised group of landless farmers in China. Using representative survey data (N = 620) collected in the communities of landless farmers in Yunnan Province, this study examined the effects of active personal networks on employment status of landless farmers in the transition from rural to urban living. Our findings suggested that landless farmers more active in personal networks (receiving more support through the networks) were more likely to obtain employment in cities. This positive effect was much stronger for male landless farmers than for their female counterparts. While active personal networks significantly improved the opportunity of employment of older landless farmers, they had an insignificant effect on the younger ones. Social policies and service programmes aimed to facilitate landless farmers’ urban adjustment need to pay more attention to the community-based approach, and take into consideration the different service needs of different groups within this marginalised population.     

From quasi‐markets to public–private networks: Employers' engagement in public employment services

This article explores the implications of creating a role for private‐sector partners in public employment services (PES), rather than creating quasi‐markets. It focuses on how the engagement of employers in public–private networks with local government can enhance employment opportunities for disadvantaged welfare recipients but may require a further shift in local public services. The theory relates to contractual arrangements versus network modes of public–private partnerships. Based on surveys among employers and welfare recipients, and interviews with politicians, managers, and frontline workers in five Dutch municipalities, the article provides detailed evidence on innovative and promising cases of public–private networks in employment services. It shows that, under certain conditions, vulnerable jobseekers are better served by a network involving employers than by the standard supply‐driven approach that predominates in quasi‐markets. It also reveals that public and private partners have yet to fully embrace the implications of the network approach for their respective roles. The article contributes to the theoretical debate on public–private partnerships in the context of PES, reflecting on public–private networks as a policy design that could help improve employment opportunities for disadvantaged jobseekers.     

Unemployment services for newly arrived migrants in Sweden: The privatization and rebureaucratization of the introduction programme

A recent policy reform in Sweden reorganized the management of newly arrived migrants' entrance into the labour market, which resulted in the Swedish Public Employment Service being given coordinating responsibility and introducing private service providers. Building on qualitative interviews with public employment officers and private actors, this study focuses on how the political contradictions in the new 2-year introduction programme are managed at the organizational level. In the article, it is argued that although both public employment officers and private actors experience difficulty separating unemployed migrants' need for social support from the workfare ambitions of the programme, aspects of privatization—such as freedom of choice and the service specification—further complicate this situation. Thus, the individualization aspects of the policy should be viewed as countering some of the more controlling aspects of the reform, thus, in effect, neutralizing its liberalizing tendencies.     

(Not) Taking Account of Precarious Employment: Workfare Policies and Lone Mothers in Ontario and the UK

Workfare is, at least in part, a policy response to changing labour markets and the expansion taking place in jobs that are low‐paid, irregular and insecure. For lone mothers, increasingly the focus of workfare policies, precarious employment creates special challenges. However, the nature of the jobs that are available to women on social assistance has received relatively little attention in the workfare literature, which focuses more on individual characteristics, supports to employment, and programme impacts. Drawing upon both primary and secondary sources and using Ontario, the province with the most developed workfare programme in Canada, this article examines the ways in which policies support and enforce precarious employment. The article also considers the implications of precarious employment for UK policy, which has not (yet) adopted workfare for lone mothers, although incremental steps in that direction are taking place as employment is increasingly viewed as the appropriate objective of income support programmes for lone mothers.