Journal for Labour Market Research

Using matched cross-sectional data drawn from the 2010 and 2012 Displaced Workers Supplements of the Current Population Surveys and the 2010, 2012, and 2013 American Time Use Survey Well-Being Modules, this paper examines the relationship between job displacement and various measures of subjective well-being by sex. Displaced men report lower levels of life evaluation than nondisplaced men due to the differences in employment, marital status and income, whereas displaced women report lower levels of net affect and happiness and increased pain, sadness, and stress than nondisplaced women, but no difference in their life evaluation...

In this paper, we decompose worldwide PISA mathematics and reading scores. While mathematics scores are still tilted towards boys, girls have a larger advantage in reading over boys. Girls' disadvantage in mathematics is increasing over the distribution of talents. Our decomposition shows that part of this increase can be explained by an increasing trend in productive endowments and learning productivity, although the largest part remains unexplained. Countries' general level of gender (in)equality also contributes to girls' disadvantage...

The German workfare scheme 'One-Euro-Jobs', which provides additional jobs of public interest for welfare recipients, has a number of different goals. On the one hand, One-Euro-Jobs are intended to increase the participants' employment prospects in the medium term. On the other hand, they can be used to test welfare recipients' willingness to work. We use survey data from the Panel Study 'Labour Market and Social Security' and propensity score matching methods to study the intention-to-treat effect of receiving a One-Euro-Job announcement on job search behaviour, reservation wage and labour market performance of welfare recipients...

The analysis uses seven waves from the German Panel Study Labor Market and Social Security (PASS) covering the period from 2006 to 2013. During the observation period, Germany experienced a significant increase in average real incomes and employment, accompanied by a decrease of absolute income poverty as measured by the at-risk-of-poverty rate anchored at a fixed moment in time. PASS collects information on material deprivation with a list of 26 possessions and activities. The article discusses the difficulties of measuring material deprivation and identifies several sources of measurement error and selection bias...

This paper seeks to provide a continuous measure to represent the distance between skills acquired in tertiary education and those required in an individual's occupation. This distance measure, which is computed by combining data from the 2010 Brazilian census with information from the 2010 Brazilian classification of occupations, suggests that workers usually classified in most of the literature into a single group of mismatches are in fact quite heterogeneous in the way their occupations are associated with areas of study...

This paper studies the contribution of different skill groups to the polarisation of the UK labour market. We show that the large increase in graduate numbers contributed to the substantial reallocation of employment from middling to top occupations which is the main feature of the polarisation process in the UK over the past three decades. The increase in the number of immigrants, on the other hand, does not account for any particular aspect of the polarisation in the UK. Changes in the skill mix of the workforce account for most of the decline in routine employment across the occupational distribution, but within-group changes account for most of the decline in routine occupations in middling occupations...

We ask how employers contribute to unemployment scarring in the recruitment process in the German-speaking part of Switzerland. By drawing on recruitment theories, we aim to better understand how recruiters assess different patterns of unemployment in a job candidate's CV and how this affects the chances of young applicants being considered for a vacancy. We argue that in contexts with tight school-work linkage and highly standardised Vocational Education and Training systems, the detrimental effect of early unemployment depends on how well the applicant's profile matches the requirements of the advertised position...

In almost all developed countries there has been substantial growth in university education over the last half-century. This growth has raised concerns that the benefits of university education are declining and that university education is not appropriate for students who, without the expansion, would not have been admitted. For such students, vocational education or direct entry to the labour market may be more appropriate. The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of university and vocational qualifications, net of other influences on a variety of labour market outcomes for Australian youths up to age 25; and if the benefits of university degrees differ across the achievement continuum...

This paper looks at the effect of technological and organisational changes on the probability for workers in the second part of their careers of transmitting their knowledge to other colleagues in their employing firm. We use matched employer-employee data to link changes occurred at the firm level with knowledge transmission behaviours measured at the individual-level. To control for selection bias based on differences in observable characteristics between workers employed in changing work environments and those employed in non-changing ones, we apply propensity score matching techniques...

This study explores the perspectives of business college graduates, how technology has shaped the structures of their jobs, and the role of non-technical skills as they navigate the changing career path. Three overlapping themes emerged from the data analysis: (1) influence of increased technology capabilities on job structures and careers; (2) participation in job-related training and formal education as means of adapting to the new work environment; and (3) the role of non-technical skills in the workplace amidst the intensification of technology change...

In this research we show that workers aged 30-44 were significantly more likely than those aged 45-59 to find a job a year after being unemployed. The main contribution is demonstrating empirically that since older workers' difficulties are related to their age, while for younger individuals the difficulties are more related to the business cycle, policy makers must devise different programs to address unemployment among young and older individuals. The solution to youth unemployment is the creation of more jobs, and combining differential minimum wage levels and earned income tax credits might improve the rate of employment for older individuals...

Gender differences in the frequency of employer changes and their financial return were examined in a sample of Bavarian university graduates. The search and matching theories were used to develop hypotheses which were then tested against each other. The results show that in the first few years after graduation women change employer more frequently than men. In large part this can be explained by gender differences in labor market structures, in particular the fact that a woman's first job is less likely to be in a large company, in an executive position or on a permanent contract and women tend to be less satisfied with their first job...

In most OECD member countries labour force attachment, has increased in recent years not only in the age groups 60-64 years but also among people 65 years and older. Focus in this paper is on the trend in older workers' labour force participation in Denmark, Germany and Sweden since 2004. Main emphasis is given to people aged 65-69 years eligible for social security retirement programs from age 65. The gender aspect is included to accommodate different trends for women and men. To explain country differences in trends, the importance of changes in retirement policies of relevance for this age group and cohort relevant changes in education and health is examined and discussed...