On the Labour Market Progress of Polish Accession Workers in South‐East England

The enlargement of the European Union (EU) in May 2004 produced a very significant wave of immigration to the United Kingdom that is likely to continue to impact its labour market in forthcoming years. Polish migrants were by far the largest cohort of the new entrants. This paper complements previous work that has begun to establish the characteristics and labour market performance of migrants from the new member states who have entered the United Kingdom. This paper uses a unique micro‐level data base to investigate the labour market evolution of Polish migrants in the UK labour market. We find that in the first UK job returns to human capital were negligible. However, for the current job an extra year of education increases the weekly gross wage by 3.2 per cent. There is evidence of a gender differential in pay in both jobs and that older workers are paid more than their younger counterparts but this effect becomes insignificant in the current job. We find that hours worked is a significant factor in wage determination. However, the influence of hours worked on wages declined by approximately 38 per cent between the first and current job. Results from multinomial logit models suggest that over‐time there is some “match” between the occupational groupings that these workers were attached to in Poland and the United Kingdom. We also find evidence that the use of employment agencies by some of these workers increases the likelihood of employment in skilled manual and non‐manual occupations. Workers who have had supervisory responsibility in the United Kingdom are more likely to be in professional or intermediate occupations.     

Labour Market Disadvantages of Second‐Generation Turks and Moroccans in the Netherlands: Before and during the Great Recession

This study uses two waves of panel data to examine the labour market integration of children of Moroccan and Turkish immigrants in the Netherlands. The data show a persisting educational attainment gap in terms of high school completion and post‐secondary attendance. The analyses of prime working‐age respondents indicate substantial ethnic penalties that accrue from the hiring process: controlling for educational background and demographics, the youngest cohort of the second generation is less likely to have employment than the native Dutch. We improve on earlier research on ethnic penalties in the Dutch labour market by including measures of precarious work – the chance of avoiding of non‐contracted work – and by comparing minorities’ standing in a pre‐recession (2009) and a peak‐recession (2013) labour market. The results indicate increasing employment disadvantages for both second‐generation groups at a time of labour surplus.     

A multidimensional employment quality index for Brazil, 2002–11

In countries where informal, insecure jobs are widespread, traditional labour market indicators – such as the unemployment rate, labour force participation rate and wages – are not necessarily the most meaningful. The authors use a multidimensional employment quality index to analyse the Brazilian labour market over the period 2002–11, across three dimensions: earnings, formality (measured by the existence of an employment contract and social security contributions) and job tenure. The results show a significant increase in employment quality overall, especially in the years 2009–11, but with considerable differences between wage employees and self‐employed workers, and between industries.     

Social Capital,Labour Markets,and Job‐Finding in Urban and Rural Regions: comparing paths to employment in prosperous cities and stressed rural communities in Canada1,2

This paper compares paths to employment (job‐finding) in prosperous cities and economically‐stressed rural communities in Canada. Since the pioneering work of Mark Granovetter (1973; 1974 ), sociologists have investigated the role of social capital in job‐finding (specifically, the use of strong and weak social ties to find out about employment opportunities). To date, however, there have been few direct comparisons of job‐finding in urban and rural settings (see Lindsay et al., 2005 ; Wahba and Zenou, 2005 ). Using data from two major surveys and a qualitative interview project, we uncover several important differences in urban and rural paths to employment. First, we find that both strong and weak ties are used more frequently by rural residents to find a job, while city‐dwellers rely more often on formal or impersonal means. Second, we find much stronger evidence of differentiation within rural regions. Long‐time rural residents are much more likely to use strong and weak ties to find employment than are newcomers. However, rural residents who used weak ties as paths to employment have significantly lower incomes. None of these patterns are evident in the cities. Together, these findings lead us to conclude that job‐finding in rural settings is strongly affected by constraints – in the labour market and in social capital resources – that are not present in cities.     

Shadow employment in post-transition—Is informal employment a matter of choice or no choice in Poland?

According to a dualistic view, shadow employment may follow from two main labour market failures: (i) official market labour taxation distortions make it ineffective for some agents to engage in registered employment due to a tax wedge; or (ii) for some workers regular employment may be unattainable do to some high access costs or demand constraints, which results in seeking earning opportunities beyond the boundaries of the official labour market. Whereas in the first case revenues from unofficial employment should be higher than the corresponding official ones (tax evasion hypothesis), in the alternative explanation labour market tightness seems to be an underlying reason (market segmentation hypothesis).We use a unique data set from a survey on undeclared employment from Poland. Using propensity score matching and decomposition techniques we demonstrate that workers of shadow economy are characterised by slightly higher endowments, while their revenues are considerably lower than among matched official economy counterparts. Although unobservable heterogeneity is considerable, results are robust. Although this is not direct evidence, we believe these results point to the labour market segmentation hypothesis and endangerment with social exclusion.     

The Socioeconomic Incorporation of Immigrant and Native‐born Day Labourers in Tshwane,South Africa

It has been widely documented that unauthorized immigrants experience adverse economic incorporation in destination countries, particularly in the global North. Faced with restricted employment opportunities, many are drawn into informalizing segments of the labour market where earnings are low and unstable. Much less is known about how immigrant workers fare in the informal economy of cities of the South. Using surveys conducted in 2004, 2007 and 2015, we examine the economic outcomes of immigrant and native‐born workers who participate in the day labour markets of Tshwane, South Africa. In 2004 there were signs that foreign‐born workers enjoyed modestly better outcomes than South Africa‐born workers. In the latter periods, however, these advantages have disappeared and there are indications of a downward convergence of employment outcomes. The article concludes with a call for creating worker centres to regulate informal job markets for the benefit of workers, regardless of immigration status.     

SMARTer indicators for decent work in a post‐2015 development agenda: A proposal

The MDG employment indicators suffer from major shortcomings, including measurement problems, inappropriate use of aggregate statistics, ambiguous interpretability, and assumptions that do not apply to developing countries. Based on this critique, the authors propose a new set of four indicators for productive employment and decent work, namely: the growth of labour value added per worker, the working poverty rate, the share of workers receiving less than an absolute minimum labour income, and the share of workers receiving less than 60 per cent of the median labour income. They demonstrate the empirical application of these indicators using the country cases of Uganda and Peru.     

How accommodations affect the duration of post-injury employment spells

I examine the effects of accommodations on the duration of employment spells using a sample of workers reentering the work force after an occupational injury. Unlike previous research, I analyze the post-injury employment history, i.e., more than one employment spell. The results indicate that accommodations have a smaller effect on employment duration than previous studies for workers who have not left their jobs. In addition, only certain types of accommodations, flexible work schedules and modified workplaces, are associated with significant increases in employment duration. The implications of these estimates for disability policy are also briefly discussed.     

The use of alternative work arrangements by the jobless: Evidence from the CAEAS/CPS

Alternative work arrangements (AWAs), such as contracting, consulting, and temporary work, have been criticized as providing only atypical, even precarious, employment. Yet they may also allow workers to locate suitable job matches. Exploiting data from four Contingent and Alternative Employment Arrangement Supplements to the Current Population Survey, we investigate the initial job-finding strategies pursued by the unemployed. Within the narrow window offered by the data, we find that unemployed workers who become reemployed are more likely to find work in AWAs than in regular, open-ended employment. When we evaluate the use of AWAs against unemployment, there is also evidence that the jobless are entering AWAs as pathways out of their initial labor market state.     

Photographs of young generations on the Dutch labour market

In the light of the decline of “standard” employment relationships in many countries and its particular effect on young people, this article provides a detailed analysis of the labour market trajectories of early-career workers in the Netherlands between 1985 and 2014, adopting the approach of the sequence analysis of life-course events. Using two indicators for instability (entropy and turbulence), the authors find that cohorts that entered the labour market after 2000, and particularly in 2008, experience greater employment status instability despite the flexicurity policies applied. Transitions into stable employment are the exception rather than the rule.     

Volunteering and the gender division of labour: A Franco-British comparison

Cross-national analyses of the gender division of labour usually focus on employment and domestic labour. This paper argues that formal and informal voluntary work should be included in such analyses. Using available secondary sources, the paper compares the gender division of voluntary work in Britain and France – two countries with well-documented differences and similarities concerning employment and domestic labour. The paper reveals that French women, with a higher commitment to the labour market and a slightly larger share of the burden of domestic labour, have a higher commitment to formal voluntary activity but engage less in informal volunteering than their British counterparts whereas French men, with shorter hours in employment and a slightly smaller contribution to domestic labour, undertake more formal and informal voluntary work than their British counterparts. In France, men consistently undertake more voluntary work than women whilst in Britain, there is a degree of gender equality in formal voluntary work but women undertake significantly more informal voluntary work than men. The paper explains the differences and similarities found by considering the role of the state and social policy, the question of ‘time availability’, and the question of what motivates individuals to undertake voluntary work.     

Asymmetric Information under the Kafala Sponsorship System: Impacts on Foreign Domestic Workers’ Income and Employment Status in the GCC Countries

This article examines the legal and policy implications of information asymmetry for foreign domestic workers employed under the Kafala sponsorship system in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. Drawing from ethnographic and field‐based observations in large GCC migrant destinations – including Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – we investigate the information flows and market uncertainties between five key stakeholders: labour‐receiving governments, labour‐sending governments, recruitment agencies (subagents), sponsors (employers), and social networks. Several factors contribute to asymmetric information: the lack of bilateral labour agreements and government policy coordination, programs between and among government entities, the absence of labour law for domestic workers, and the laissez faire approach of the labour‐receiving government. These sources of asymmetric information create serious market vulnerabilities for the domestic worker population, often resulting in loss of employment and early deportation. The concluding section further outlines policy implications and areas of methodological research on GCC migration.     

US and them: Job quality differences between natives and immigrants in Europe

Using microdata from the European Union Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS) and aggregate indicators of labour market institutions, this article compares the job quality of native and non-native workers across European countries and analyses the impact of the institutional settings on the job quality differential between both groups. The LFS is used to measure a job quality index for the period 2005–2017. We find that some immigrant groups fare worse than natives, the contribution of the “composition effect” to explain this differential is large, and the institutional framework affects the immigration gap in job quality. In particular, some labour market institutions (more centralized wage bargaining, stricter employment protection legislation) tend to be detrimental for immigrants relative to natives, while integration policies seem to work well in reducing these differences.     

Privileging work not sex: flexibility and employment in the sexual services industry

We present findings from a study of sex workers recruited in indoor licensed premises in Victoria. While the study addressed regulation, enforcement and working conditions, we focus on the value of flexible well‐paid work for two particular groups of female workers (parents and students). We link this issue of flexibility to broader gendered employment conditions in Australia, arguing the lack of comparable employment is crucial to understanding worker decisions about sex work. Debates and regulation focus on gendered inequalities related to heterosexuality much more than they recognize gendered inequalities related to labour market conditions. The focus on criminalization, harm, exploitation and stigma obscures the centrality of work flexibility and conditions to women's decision‐making. A more direct focus on the broader employment context may produce better recognition of why women do sex work.     

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.     

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.     

Regional wages and subjective measures of employment opportunities

We utilise a rich set of regional labour market variables to explain regional variation in Norwegian manufacturing wages. In particular, regional indicators of labour market conditions are computed from survey data in which respondents are asked to evaluate local employment opportunities. We find that average reported satisfaction with local job prospects and other survey-based indicators perform better in regional wage equations than traditional labour market variables, including the regional unemployment rate. Our results suggest that subjective measures of employment opportunities provide useful information about wage pressure.     

STEM Education and STEM Work: Nativity Inequalities in Occupations and Earnings

The recruitment of skilled workers with expertise in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) is a core component of North American immigration policies. However, few studies examine the labour market integration of immigrant STEM educated workers. Multivariate analysis of the 2011 National Household Survey show that STEM educated immigrants who arrive as adults are less likely than the Canadian born to have STEM jobs and they earn less than their Canadian born counterparts. These patterns partly reflect their socio‐demographic characteristics, particularly their lower language proficiencies (measured as a combination of mother tongue and languages spoken at home) and the receipt of their degrees in institutions outside of Canada. These immigrant workers arrived primarily in the skilled worker programme that did not require pre‐arranged employment. Policy changes in recruitment and their implications for future STEM immigrant workers are discussed in the conclusion.     

Short Term Gain, Long Term Pain

This paper examines the role of informal job search methods on the labour market outcomes of displaced workers. Informal job search methods could alleviate short-term labour market difficulties of displaced workers by providing information on job opportunities, allowing them to signal their productivity and may mitigate wage losses through better post-displacement job matching. However if displacement results from reductions in demand for specific sectors/skills, the use of informal job search methods may increase the risk of job instability. While informal job search methods are associated with lower wage losses, they lead to increased job instability and increased risk of subsequent job displacement.