Why employment matters: Reviving growth and reducing inequality

The global economic crisis has led to a sharp slowdown in growth and an even greater slowdown in employment creation. The resulting deterioration in the quality of employment has exacerbated the longer‐term trend of rising inequality. Jobless growth has dampened output growth through a worsening income distribution. Wages are costs on the supply side but are also incomes on the demand side, so that profit‐led growth and wage‐led growth are complements, not substitutes. Thus, growth can create jobs, while added jobs can drive growth. More employment and better jobs can also mitigate rising inequality. If macroeconomic policies focus on fostering employment creation and supporting economic growth, rather than on price stability and balanced budgets, employment would revive growth and reduce inequality.     

Economic growth,labour flexibilization and employment quality in Colombia, 2002–11

Over the period 2002–11, the Colombian labour market saw a marked improvement in employment opportunities, accompanied by an increase in nonstandard forms of employment. The authors look at how this affected employment quality, using a composite index based on Categorical Principal Components Analysis (CATPCA). They observe a small but widespread improvement in employment quality – mainly for self‐employed women – brought about by higher earnings, increased social protection and less time‐related underemployment. However, a considerable “quality deficit” remains, which calls for policies to strengthen labour market institutions and stimulate productivity and investment.     

Long‐term employment intensity of sectoral output growth in Tunisia

This article examines the long‐term ability of Tunisian industries to generate employment opportunities. Using a panel data set of 15 industries over 1983–2010, the authors estimate their long‐run output–employment elasticities, using the “mean group” estimator. They argue that economic policy should target the most labour‐intensive industries, particularly service industries and export manufacturing industries. After demonstrating the inability of the mining industry to absorb labour, the authors highlight the long‐run jobless growth in the hotel, bar and restaurant industry and suggest that future investment in this industry will yield no results and that future tourism policy should focus rather on para‐tourism activities.     

The relationship between youth employment and older persons' employment in 20 OECD countries

Inspired by the “lump of labour” theory, a large number of OECD countries have encouraged the expansion of early retirement policies in response to rising unemployment since the 1970s. In reality, however, youth employment is found to be positively correlated with older persons' employment, although this is simply the overall finding for all OECD countries because most studies estimate average effects. Less is known about diversity in the relationship between youth employment and the employment of older workers. In order to help fill the research gap in this area, this study explores the heterogeneity of that relationship across 20 OECD countries.     

Informal employment: Two contested policy issues

This article addresses two contested issues of crucial importance to policy, namely: formal labour regulations as a cause of informal employment, and so‐called “voluntary” informal employment. The authors provide theoretical overviews on both issues and an extensive survey of empirical studies on the effects of formal labour regulations on informal employment. The article closes with observations on the relevance of the ILO's four decent work objectives for informal employment and economic development, with particular emphasis on the significance of – and potential for – organizing workers in the informal economy.     

Young people's time use and maternal employment in the UK1

This paper analyses the relationship between young people's time use and maternal employment in the United Kingdom (UK). Two dimensions of young people's time use are important for understanding the impact of maternal employment. The first of these is family context. This concerns the time young people are near their parents or not. The second relates to young people's activity patterns. Combining information from both dimensions is necessary to provide a comprehensive overview of the impact of maternal employment on young people's time use. The paper demonstrates that young people's time use is associated with maternal employment both in terms of activity patterns and family context. Young people with employed mothers spend more time alone with a father, and more time with neither parent. More specifically, young people with mothers employed fulltime (FT) spend significantly more time watching TV than those whose mothers are not employed, especially when they are not near any parents. There is a negative association between FT maternal employment and the time young people spend in achievement‐related activities, concentrated in time when alone with a mother. Unlike time in leisure activities or time watching TV, time in achievement‐related activities when in the presence of a father does not increase to compensate for the loss in time spent in achievement‐related activities when alone with a mother.     

What Brazil learned from labour flexibilization in the 1990s

The debt crisis of 1981–83 changed the course that Brazil's social and labour policy had followed from the 1930s to the 1970s. The social and labour protection systems built up over those five decades – in conjunction with urbanization, industrialization and the rise of wage employment – were gradually dismantled. The neo‐liberal policies adopted, however, failed to generate sufficient economic growth and brought worsening unemployment and job insecurity instead. Since the end of 2002, Brazil has been turning away from its “neo‐liberal society “project.     

Correlates of Voluntary vs. Involuntary Part‐time Employment among US Women

This article presents a study of the extent to which type and duration of labour force attachment add to the explanatory power of psychological, demographic, and family household characteristics to predict voluntary (n=166) vs. involuntary part‐time (n=160) employment of women in the United States. We use the terms ‘voluntary’ and ‘involuntary’ to reflect the woman's choice in accepting to work in paid part‐time employment. In this context, voluntary part‐time work is not meant to be construed as charitable, non‐paid activities, but rather is construed as individuals who are working part‐time but who would prefer to be working full‐time, if a suitable job were available. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Labor Market Experience (NLSLME), we found that labour market attachment characteristics added little to predict part‐time employment status (involuntary vs. voluntary) and had virtually no effect on the odds of any other correlates on employment status. The major exception was number of years of unemployment. The longer working women were previously unemployed, the greater the likelihood they were involuntarily employed in part‐time jobs. In addition, we found that marriage and private sector employment decreased the likelihood of involuntary part‐time employment. Findings suggest that involuntarily part‐time employed women appear to be ‘settling’ for what they can get, namely, part‐time rather than full‐time jobs and that unmarried part‐timers may be viewed as a stigmatized or marginal group more likely to be employed in the public rather than private sector. Policy implications and future research are discussed.     

A new work–life balance: gender and employment in young people’s perceptions in Chile

The paper explores perceptions regarding family and paid employment expressed by university students in Chile, based on the analysis of quantitative data from the Maule region (southern Chile). We argue that the increasing unpredictability of labor markets has eroded the role paid employment historically has had as the lynchpin of individual’s – particularly men’s – life project, altering the expectations about both work and family life. Likewise, changes in gender roles have shaped youngsters’ ideals about family life. This seems to be the case especially for women, who strongly affirm their economic independence and personal projects, departing from traditional family views. We conclude that young people are demanding a new balance between life (understood mainly as personal and family time) and work. There is also a strong affirmation of the individual project, including a demand for greater gender equality. Although still at the level of projected visions of the future, these findings signal changes in the way the relation work–family is traditionally organized, bringing new challenges for public policy.     

Structural shifts in the employment of foreign workers in Austria

The full economic importance of immigration becomes clear only when one examines the concentration of immigrant workers in certain industries and occupations, and this is done in the case of Austria to show the degree of segmentation of the labor market between indigenous and foreign labor. In the course of the 1960s the employment of foreign labor gained importance in Austria. As a consequence, bilateral agreements with the major recruiting countries were made, e.g., with Spain in 1962 and 1969, with Turkey in 1964, and with Yugoslavia in 1966. The reason for the increasing demand for foreign labor was the short supply of indigenous labor due to increasing participation rates and strong economic growth. The demand-pull for foreign labor gained momentum with the onset of the economic boom in 1970, so that by the end of 1973 the number of foreign workers had doubled in comparison to 1970. The 226,800 foreign workers accounted for 8.7% of total employment. The 1974-75 recession and the weak economic development ever since resulted in a decreasing demand for labor. At the same time, the supply of indigenous labor increased as a consequence of a demographic effect and because of increasing participation rates of women. From 1981 to the present, foreign employment decreased again due to the unusually long period of economic stagnation. During 1983, 145,300 foreign workers were engaged, i.e., 5.3% of total employment. The structure for foreign employment now differs greatly from that in the 1960s. The share of women in foreign employment has increased steadily from some 20% in the early 1960s to 31% in 1973 and 40% in 1983 -- a value comparable to the Austrian female share in employment. The reduction of foreign employment since 1973 affected, above all, Yugoslav men. the share of Yugoslavs in foreign employment decreased from 196,300 or 79% in 1973 to 92,200 or 61.7% in 1983. With the duration of foreign employment rising, the disribution of foreign labor over economic branches increased. In the early 1960s the employment of foreign workers was concentrated in 3 branches -- the construction sector (32% of all foreign workers), metal industries (16%), and textile industries (10%). In 1982 only 1/3 of all foreign workers were still employed in these branches as an infiltration by foreign labor had taken place in all sectors. The services sector showed the greatest increase in foreign employment since 1975. There has never been as strong a concentration of 1 nationality in a particular economic branch as in Switzerland, Germany, or France. Case studies in Austria reveal that it was an explicit policy for firms (and also unions and entrepreneur representatives) not to depend on only 1 nationality of foreign workers. According to the case studies, about 1/3 of all foreign workers today occupy jobs which are in direct competition with indigenous labor. Another 1/3 fill jobs which are complementary to indigenous labor. For the remainder it is difficult to say to what extent they belong to one or the other segment of the labor market, because there is no information available on the occupational job structure.     

Women's employment patterns during early parenthood: A group‐based trajectory analysis

Research on women's employment and parenthood frequently focuses on the correlates and consequences of decisions at a particular time, such as a birth. This article applies a group‐based trajectory method to examine women's employment trajectories across the period of early parenthood using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (N= 2,093). We find that throughout early parenthood, women exhibit significant movement into and out of the labor force. Factors that typically predict women's employment status, such as age at first birth and education, are also good predictors of women's employment patterns. We discuss the implications of these findings for future research, particularly on the use of a static measure of women's or couples’ employment status.     

Out of the shadows: Classifying economies by the extent and nature of employment in the informal economy

Given the prevalence of informality, this article proposes a typology for classifying countries by the extent and nature of employment in the informal economy, rather than by the composition of their formal economies. The author analyses ILO data on employment in the informal economy in 36 developing countries, and shows that there is a significant correlation between cross‐national variations in the degree and intensity of informalization and cross‐national variations in social and economic indicators such as levels of GNP per capita, corruption, poverty, taxation and social contributions. The article concludes by discussing implications for theory and policy.     

Pushed or Pulled? Women's Entry into Self‐Employment and Small Business Ownership

Over the past two decades the economies of Canada and many other industrialized countries have seen significant restructuring, bringing with it steadily rising levels of self‐employment and small business ownership. Women have been at the forefront of this change. Of the many questions raised by women's entrance into self‐employment, a central one concerns the factors fuelling its growth. While some argue that women have been pulled into self‐employment by the promise of independence, flexibility and the opportunity to escape barriers in paid employment, others argue that women have been pushed into it as restructuring and downsizing has eroded the availability of once secure jobs in the public and private sector. To date, existing research on the ‘push–pull’ debate has not fully answered; these questions, with survey and labour force data suggesting only general and sometimes contradictory, trends. This article examines this issue in greater detail, drawing on in‐depth interviews with 61 self‐employed women in Canada. Overall their experiences shed further light on the expansion of women's self‐employment in the 1990s, suggesting push factors have been underestimated and challenging the current contours of the ‘push–pull’ debate.     

Measuring employment vulnerability in Europe

Two of the most notable trends in labour markets in Europe are the rise in the number of atypical job contracts (e.g. fixed‐term contracts and temporary work) and the increase in job turnover. The concept of “employment vulnerability” can be used to describe these trends, which weaken the employer–employee relationship. In this article, the authors measure this employment vulnerability, for individual European countries, by creating two indices – an “employer‐related vulnerability index” and a “job‐related vulnerability index” – which are then aggregated to form an overall employment vulnerability index.     

Institutional and Demographic Explanations of Women's Employment in 18 OECD Countries, 1975–1999

This study combined demographic and institutional explanations of women's employment, describing and explaining the degree to which mothers in industrialized societies are less likely to be employed than women without children. A large number of cross‐sectional surveys were pooled, covering 18 Organisation for Economic Co‐Operation and Development countries, 192,484 observations, and 305 country‐years between 1975 and 1999. These data were merged with measures of institutional context and analyzed with multilevel logistic regression. The results indicate that, over time, women were increasingly likely to combine motherhood and employment in many, but not all, countries. Both mothers and women without children were more likely to be employed in societies with a large service sector and low unemployment. The employment of women without children was generally unaffected by family policies. Mothers were more likely to be employed in societies with extensive reconciliation policies and limited family allowances.     

Class habitus and perception of the future: recession,employment insecurity and temporality

This paper examines the consequences of the recent economic downturn and UK government spending cuts, as exacerbations of prevailing trends in neoliberal employment policy, on temporal perception, specifically as it relates to the adaptation of subjective anticipations of and projections into the future to objective prospects of unemployment by class. Grounded in a phenomenologically‐minded Bourdieusian conceptualization of class and time and contextualized by statistics on chances of job loss, it draws on qualitative research with 57 individuals from across the class structure to chart differing dispositions toward the future. In particular, it distinguishes three orientations – the future as controllable, the future as uncontrollable and the future as reasonably controllable – which appear to correspond with resources possessed.     

Adults with cystic fibrosis and barriers to employment

Existing research on cystic fibrosis (CF) tends to view CF as a long‐term medical condition of childhood, thus reinforcing the mistaken view that few children with CF survive into adulthood. Despite the fact that people with CF are increasingly living into older age there has been little research into the employment of adults with CF. Those studies which have been undertaken portray CF as a ‘serious illness’ which causes employment problems. In contrast, this paper discusses findings from a study which explored the employment experiences of adults with CF from a social model perspective. The findings reveal barriers to employment which are similar to those experienced by other disabled people, as well as barriers related to the ‘impairment effects’ of CF. The authors conclude that adults with CF have valuable perspectives to contribute to social model analysis and the development of employment‐related policy solutions.     

Motherhood and Employment Among Whites,Hispanics, and Blacks: A Life Course Approach

Research has shown that having children reduces women's employment; yet how this effect differs for racial minorities has received less attention. Using random effects models and data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N = 4,526), this study investigates the association between motherhood and employment among Whites, Hispanics, and Blacks over women's entire reproductive span. Results indicate that having children reduces labor force participation primarily by deterring full‐time employment. This effect is stronger and lasts longer among Whites, smaller and shorter among Hispanics, and brief among Blacks. Motherhood reduces part‐time employment for young mothers, but temporarily increases it for older mothers. Early childbearing partly explains Black and Hispanic women's low employment rates at young ages; interestingly, the evidence indicates that their employment prospects would benefit the most from delaying childbearing. This study highlights the relevance of intersectionality and the life course perspective for investigating inequality in the labor market.     

To work or not to work: Variables affecting non‐financial employment commitment over time

The most common indicator of non‐financial employment commitment (NFEC) is the “lottery question” – whether a person would continue working if they won a lottery. This cross‐sectional research seeks to identify the demographic variables and the “meaning of work” dimensions that could predict individual NFEC, presenting the main international findings over time, with particular reference to data collected in Israel in 1981, 1994 and 2006. The authors' findings point to a marked decrease in NFEC in the new millennium and a change in its predictors over time. The findings and their implications for work and employment are examined in the light of social and economic changes in Israel.     

Quality of employment in Latin America: Theory and evidence

Historically, the development literature concerned with Latin American labour markets has focused on job numbers and productivity. But given the persistence of large shares of informal and now otherwise precarious employment, the authors argue that meaningful analysis also requires consideration of the implications of occupational status for the quality of employment. Based on empirical evidence from recent decades, they conclude that most dimensions of this concept – including social protection – depend on the conclusion of a written contract of employment. This finding leads them to outline policy options for stabilizing formal employment and securing adequate funding for social protection.