In the 1997 and 1998 waves of the British Household Panel Survey, workers are asked to assess the... more In the 1997 and 1998 waves of the British Household Panel Survey, workers are asked to assess their level of job security in terms of the probability of becoming unemployed within the next year. We examine whether these perceptions of insecurity are purely subjective or are systematically related to certain characteristics of the worker and their current job. The responses offered by workers suggest that around 10% are in fear of becoming unemployed, and this fear is not persistently confined to the same workers or to particular occupational groups. Individuals with a history of unemployment and those holding short-term employment contracts are found to report the greatest levels of insecurity. Finally, we find that workers' perceptions of unemployment are strong predictors of actual unemployment experiences occurring in the subsequent year. We therefore conclude that such subjective measures of insecurity do convey useful information that may be used in further analyses of the ...
As a consequence of the rapid growth of temporary agency employment in Germany, the debate on the... more As a consequence of the rapid growth of temporary agency employment in Germany, the debate on the remuneration of temporary agency workers has intensified recently. The study finds that the earnings gap of temporary help workers in Germany is indeed large and increased during the past decade. Decomposition reveals that the widening gap mainly is driven by changes in relative skill prices and less by differences in the workforce composition. Temps already have to accept a marked earnings decline before entering the temporary help sector. Nevertheless, after leaving the sector temporary help workers no longer have to accept a pay penalty. A recent reform set a high incentive for temporary help agencies to pay their workers according to a collective agreement. Surprisingly, the unionization of the sector could not bring thewidening earnings gap to a halt.
ABSTRACT Supporters and critics of free schools in England have had differing expectations about ... more ABSTRACT Supporters and critics of free schools in England have had differing expectations about whether free schools would emerge in socially disadvantaged areas, and whether they would become socially selective. We investigate the outcomes, using information from the first three years since the introduction of the first new schools in 2011, drawn from the National Pupil Database. We find that, as policy proposers had expected, free schools have been situated in neighbourhoods that are somewhat above average in terms of the proportions entitled to free school meals, a well-known indicator of social disadvantage. Nevertheless, we also find that the free schools are socially selective within their neighbourhoods. These two effects balance out so that, overall, compared with the average for all England, there are no great differences between the social composition of secondary free schools and that of the national average. However, at primary school level there is evidence that free schools are enrolling children with above average ability. Moreover, there are very substantive differences between the ethnic composition of free schools and other schools. Despite these differences, we find little evidence that the presence of free schools is having an effect on the social composition of intakes to other schools in their neighbourhoods or on segregation in the local authority as a whole. We suggest this may be because there are still too few free schools, with very small cohort sizes, recruiting from very dispersed areas.
ABSTRACT The resource-based view (RBV) of the firm has focused attention on the importance of ali... more ABSTRACT The resource-based view (RBV) of the firm has focused attention on the importance of aligning employees' needs with the requirements of the jobs they do. This article focuses on how these needs and requirements interact in terms of learning. It does so in two ways. First, it develops new survey instruments to capture the learning demands of jobs and the learning dispositions of workers and uses them for the first time in a survey of 2,810 employees. Second, it examines how these person and job characteristics correlate with specific aspects of job satisfaction and job-related well-being. The results show that although learning alignment is associated with high levels of satisfaction and well-being, not all learning misalignments are associated with the reverse.
ABSTRACT The conventional focus on the training participation rate, rather than training volume, ... more ABSTRACT The conventional focus on the training participation rate, rather than training volume, in official statistics and research has obscured a radical transformation in workers’ training in Britain. To obtain a picture of the trend in training volume, we synthesize a narrative through a new analysis of multiple surveys. The duration of training fell sharply with the result that the training volume per worker declined by about a half between 1997 and 2012. This fall is hard to reconcile with optimistic rhetoric surrounding the knowledge economy. Potential explanations are discussed. We conclude with recommendations to improve the collection of training statistics.
Simon Deakin and Francis Green trace the history from the trade boards first enacted in October 1... more Simon Deakin and Francis Green trace the history from the trade boards first enacted in October 1909 to today's National Minimum Wage.
... Page 4. Education and Training for Development in East Asia The political economy of skill fo... more ... Page 4. Education and Training for Development in East Asia The political economy of skill formation in East Asian newly industrialised economies David Ashton, Francis Green, Donna James and Johnny Sung London and New York Page 5. ...
This paper was published as Working Paper 23 by the Centre for Labour Market Studies, University ... more This paper was published as Working Paper 23 by the Centre for Labour Market Studies, University of Leicester. it is also available from http://www.clms.le.ac.uk/research/wpapers.lasso It is frequently alleged that there is a tendency towards polarisation of skills in Britain. This tendency is considered to contribute to the process of social exclusion, about which there is much academic and – since the election of the Labour government – political concern. Previous survey evidence for the 1980s seemed to confirm this position. This paper investigates whether the process has continued into the 1990s among those in work. Our main finding is that there has been no over-riding process of polarisation between 1992 and 1997. On average, individuals who has utilised below average levels of skills in the jobs they held in 1992 experienced above average increments to those skills in the subsequent five years. This finding is hardly suggestive of polarisation within the employed workforce. H...
This paper looks at evidence on the employer size-wage effect for the UK using data from the Gene... more This paper looks at evidence on the employer size-wage effect for the UK using data from the General Household Survey, British Social Attitudes Survey and the Workplace Industrial Relations Survey. We find that much larger effects in the non-union sector and for women. We consider various theoretical explanations for the size-wage effect and conclude that our findings are most consistent with a dynamic monopsony model.
In this paper, the authors argue that a dynamic monopsony model, based on labor market frictions,... more In this paper, the authors argue that a dynamic monopsony model, based on labor market frictions, predicts a positive relationship between wages and employer size, but also that the effect will be larger in the nonunion sector than in the union sector and larger for women than for men. They examine evidence on the employer size-wage effect using several microeconomic data sources and find it to be generally consistent with these predictions. After examining other theoretical explanations, their conclusion is that at least part of the employer size-wage effect is a result of monopsony power in the labor market. Copyright 1996 by Royal Economic Society.
ABSTRACT The creation of a learning environment at work has been seen as an essential concomitant... more ABSTRACT The creation of a learning environment at work has been seen as an essential concomitant of the growth of an advanced economy. This article explores the implications of direct participation for different types of employee learning, drawing upon the British Skills and Employment Surveys of 2006 and 2012. It confirms that direct participation is strongly associated with enhanced learning opportunities at work but finds important differences in the benefits of specific forms of direct participation. Moreover, direct participation was found to be particularly important for those in less favorable work contexts with respect to technological level and skill.
In the 1997 and 1998 waves of the British Household Panel Survey, workers are asked to assess the... more In the 1997 and 1998 waves of the British Household Panel Survey, workers are asked to assess their level of job security in terms of the probability of becoming unemployed within the next year. We examine whether these perceptions of insecurity are purely subjective or are systematically related to certain characteristics of the worker and their current job. The responses offered by workers suggest that around 10% are in fear of becoming unemployed, and this fear is not persistently confined to the same workers or to particular occupational groups. Individuals with a history of unemployment and those holding short-term employment contracts are found to report the greatest levels of insecurity. Finally, we find that workers' perceptions of unemployment are strong predictors of actual unemployment experiences occurring in the subsequent year. We therefore conclude that such subjective measures of insecurity do convey useful information that may be used in further analyses of the ...
As a consequence of the rapid growth of temporary agency employment in Germany, the debate on the... more As a consequence of the rapid growth of temporary agency employment in Germany, the debate on the remuneration of temporary agency workers has intensified recently. The study finds that the earnings gap of temporary help workers in Germany is indeed large and increased during the past decade. Decomposition reveals that the widening gap mainly is driven by changes in relative skill prices and less by differences in the workforce composition. Temps already have to accept a marked earnings decline before entering the temporary help sector. Nevertheless, after leaving the sector temporary help workers no longer have to accept a pay penalty. A recent reform set a high incentive for temporary help agencies to pay their workers according to a collective agreement. Surprisingly, the unionization of the sector could not bring thewidening earnings gap to a halt.
ABSTRACT Supporters and critics of free schools in England have had differing expectations about ... more ABSTRACT Supporters and critics of free schools in England have had differing expectations about whether free schools would emerge in socially disadvantaged areas, and whether they would become socially selective. We investigate the outcomes, using information from the first three years since the introduction of the first new schools in 2011, drawn from the National Pupil Database. We find that, as policy proposers had expected, free schools have been situated in neighbourhoods that are somewhat above average in terms of the proportions entitled to free school meals, a well-known indicator of social disadvantage. Nevertheless, we also find that the free schools are socially selective within their neighbourhoods. These two effects balance out so that, overall, compared with the average for all England, there are no great differences between the social composition of secondary free schools and that of the national average. However, at primary school level there is evidence that free schools are enrolling children with above average ability. Moreover, there are very substantive differences between the ethnic composition of free schools and other schools. Despite these differences, we find little evidence that the presence of free schools is having an effect on the social composition of intakes to other schools in their neighbourhoods or on segregation in the local authority as a whole. We suggest this may be because there are still too few free schools, with very small cohort sizes, recruiting from very dispersed areas.
ABSTRACT The resource-based view (RBV) of the firm has focused attention on the importance of ali... more ABSTRACT The resource-based view (RBV) of the firm has focused attention on the importance of aligning employees' needs with the requirements of the jobs they do. This article focuses on how these needs and requirements interact in terms of learning. It does so in two ways. First, it develops new survey instruments to capture the learning demands of jobs and the learning dispositions of workers and uses them for the first time in a survey of 2,810 employees. Second, it examines how these person and job characteristics correlate with specific aspects of job satisfaction and job-related well-being. The results show that although learning alignment is associated with high levels of satisfaction and well-being, not all learning misalignments are associated with the reverse.
ABSTRACT The conventional focus on the training participation rate, rather than training volume, ... more ABSTRACT The conventional focus on the training participation rate, rather than training volume, in official statistics and research has obscured a radical transformation in workers’ training in Britain. To obtain a picture of the trend in training volume, we synthesize a narrative through a new analysis of multiple surveys. The duration of training fell sharply with the result that the training volume per worker declined by about a half between 1997 and 2012. This fall is hard to reconcile with optimistic rhetoric surrounding the knowledge economy. Potential explanations are discussed. We conclude with recommendations to improve the collection of training statistics.
Simon Deakin and Francis Green trace the history from the trade boards first enacted in October 1... more Simon Deakin and Francis Green trace the history from the trade boards first enacted in October 1909 to today's National Minimum Wage.
... Page 4. Education and Training for Development in East Asia The political economy of skill fo... more ... Page 4. Education and Training for Development in East Asia The political economy of skill formation in East Asian newly industrialised economies David Ashton, Francis Green, Donna James and Johnny Sung London and New York Page 5. ...
This paper was published as Working Paper 23 by the Centre for Labour Market Studies, University ... more This paper was published as Working Paper 23 by the Centre for Labour Market Studies, University of Leicester. it is also available from http://www.clms.le.ac.uk/research/wpapers.lasso It is frequently alleged that there is a tendency towards polarisation of skills in Britain. This tendency is considered to contribute to the process of social exclusion, about which there is much academic and – since the election of the Labour government – political concern. Previous survey evidence for the 1980s seemed to confirm this position. This paper investigates whether the process has continued into the 1990s among those in work. Our main finding is that there has been no over-riding process of polarisation between 1992 and 1997. On average, individuals who has utilised below average levels of skills in the jobs they held in 1992 experienced above average increments to those skills in the subsequent five years. This finding is hardly suggestive of polarisation within the employed workforce. H...
This paper looks at evidence on the employer size-wage effect for the UK using data from the Gene... more This paper looks at evidence on the employer size-wage effect for the UK using data from the General Household Survey, British Social Attitudes Survey and the Workplace Industrial Relations Survey. We find that much larger effects in the non-union sector and for women. We consider various theoretical explanations for the size-wage effect and conclude that our findings are most consistent with a dynamic monopsony model.
In this paper, the authors argue that a dynamic monopsony model, based on labor market frictions,... more In this paper, the authors argue that a dynamic monopsony model, based on labor market frictions, predicts a positive relationship between wages and employer size, but also that the effect will be larger in the nonunion sector than in the union sector and larger for women than for men. They examine evidence on the employer size-wage effect using several microeconomic data sources and find it to be generally consistent with these predictions. After examining other theoretical explanations, their conclusion is that at least part of the employer size-wage effect is a result of monopsony power in the labor market. Copyright 1996 by Royal Economic Society.
ABSTRACT The creation of a learning environment at work has been seen as an essential concomitant... more ABSTRACT The creation of a learning environment at work has been seen as an essential concomitant of the growth of an advanced economy. This article explores the implications of direct participation for different types of employee learning, drawing upon the British Skills and Employment Surveys of 2006 and 2012. It confirms that direct participation is strongly associated with enhanced learning opportunities at work but finds important differences in the benefits of specific forms of direct participation. Moreover, direct participation was found to be particularly important for those in less favorable work contexts with respect to technological level and skill.
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