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Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to shed new light on the effects of labor market institutions and the economic conditions on self-employment composition that may help the development of a comprehensive strategy to promote job creation and sustained economic growth in the post-2009 era.

Methodology/approach – Using microdata from the European Community Household Panel for the EU-15, we analyze the effects of employment protection legislation, start-up incentives, and economic conditions on transitions from unemployment and paid employment to self-employment, as well as on self-employment survival, with a special focus on the differentiated effect of these variables on different types of self-employment.

Findings – The empirical results suggest that the coexistence of recession periods, start-up incentives, and strict employment protection may be distorting the occupational choice against true entrepreneurs and favor less entrepreneurial forms of self-employment – such as last resort or dependent. Therefore, the differentiated effect of the regulatory environment and the economic conditions over different forms of self-employment – that contribute to job creation, growth and innovation processes in a different manner – may help explaining the different incidence in terms of employment of the economic crisis across countries.

Social implications – During deep recessions, stringent labor regulations might prompt that public expenditure designed to move the unemployed back to employment favors atypical forms of employment outside the scope of labor laws, deteriorating employment rights, and the social protection of workers. As a consequence, the interaction of different LMI and the business cycle should be considered when defining the regulatory environment.

The National Assembly of Wales has powers in 20 devolved policy areas, including education, economic development, health, housing, social services and local government. Given the social democrat character of the first three elected assemblies in Wales, Wales would appear well placed to interrupt the reproduction of socio-economic disparities. However, Wales is a relatively poor part of the United Kingdom. In this chapter, we consider economic inequality among the Welsh population set within the policy and economic context. Analysis demonstrates how the Welsh labour market has responded to the economic crisis and how this has affected both inequality within Wales and spatial inequality that exist across the United Kingdom. The development of equalities and anti-poverty policy making in Wales and how these have so far been treated separately in policy are examined. The chapter concludes by considering the possibility for the new and distinct policy levers in Wales in relation to the integration of anti-poverty, employment, economic and equality policies that have the potential to address the combined impact of socio-economic inequalities in the future.

Traditionally, hiring indefinite duration contract employees has been the dominant method used by U.S. organizations to staff their labor needs. Indefinite duration contract employees, hereafter referred to as “regular” employees, have three defining characteristics: (1) they are hired directly as employees of the organization whose work they perform; (2) the duration of the employment relationship is unspecified, with a mutual expectation that it will continue as long as it is mutually satisfactory; and (3) the employment relationship provides ongoing – as opposed to intermittent – work. When their demand for labor increases, organizations staffed exclusively by regular employees can respond by having their employees work overtime or by hiring additional regular employees. Conversely, when their demand for labor decreases, such organizations can either maintain “inventories” of excess regular employees or reduce labor inputs by laying-off or reducing the work hours of regular employees.

Using two nationally representative data sets, we examine the wages, benefits, and social insurance of contingent workers compared with standard employees in South Korea. In addition, we measure employers’ investments in their contingent workforce. Our results indicate that contingent workers have become the dominant form of labor in South Korea after the 1998 Asian financial crisis and are faced with working conditions that are discriminative compared with those of standard employees. We also find that employers’ investments in contingent workers as human resources, as well as the upward mobility of contingent workers, are limited in the Korean labor market. Overall, our findings provide a comprehensive understanding of the working poor, including the social exclusion of contingent workers in an advanced developing economy.

Germany has become one of the major destination countries for labour migration within the European Union. The German government introduced temporary restrictions on labour migration after the eastern enlargement rounds of 2004 and 2007. These barriers had little impact on the overall volume of labour mobility. Rather they were accompanied by new “atypical” forms of mobility through the posting of workers, self-employment and seasonal workers, which according to EU rules are covered only by a minimum of host country regulations. The combination of temporary restrictions on regular migration and the opportunities through atypical mobility created strong incentives for companies to engage in ‘regime shopping’ strategies. This contributed to a considerable growth in outsourcing, subcontracting and flexible use of external labour added to pre-existing dynamics of low-wage competition, segmentation and fragmentation in the German labour market. Using data on the different forms of intra-EU migration to Germany, the article analyses the different paths that labour migration has frequently used since the fall of the Iron Curtain. First, it maps the changes in magnitude, character and direction of intra-EU labour mobility to Germany and the relative weight of the different channels through which such movements occurred from 2000 to 2015. Second, the article discusses the various responses by the government by the extension of collective agreements and the statutory minimum wage.

This chapter seeks to provide insights into a hitherto neglected topic – that of gender segregation among those who have taken part in vocational education and training (VET). In spite of a growing body of work on the link between educational and occupational segregation by gender, relatively little attention has been given to the specific role played by VET in facilitating gender-specific occupational segregation. Using the European Social Survey (ESS) for 20 European countries and comparable macro data from different European sources, the study examines the extent to which cross-national differences in the gender-typical or atypical occupational allocation of vocational graduates aged 20–34 can be attributed to VET-specific institutional differences.

The findings are consistent with earlier research showing the protective role played by VET in reducing non-employment levels. The findings in relation to the gender-typing of work are somewhat surprising, as they indicate that VET system characteristics make relatively little difference to occupational outcomes among women, whether or not they have a VET qualification. Slightly stronger, but still modest, relationships are found between VET system characteristics and occupational outcomes for men. Male VET graduates are more likely to be in a male-typed job in systems with a higher proportion enrolled on vocational courses. In tracked systems, however, they also tend to be more likely to enter female-typed jobs. In systems where VET prepares people for a wider range of occupations, a VET qualification can act as a protective factor against non-employment, at least for men.

Long considered the classic coordinated market economy featuring employment security and relatively little employment precarity, the German labor market has undergone profound changes in recent decades. We assess the evidence for a rise in precarious employment in Germany from 1984 to 2013. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel through the Luxembourg Income Study, we examine low-wage employment, working poverty, and temporary employment. We also analyze changes in the demographics and the education/skill level of the German labor force. Although employment overall has increased, there has been a simultaneous significant increase in earnings and wage inequality. Moreover, there has been a clear increase in all three measures of precarious employment. The analyses reveal that models including a wide variety of independent variables – demographic, education/skill, job/work characteristics, and region – cannot explain the rise of precarious employment. Instead, we propose institutional change is the most plausible explanation. In addition to reunification and major social policy and labor market reforms, we highlight the dramatic decline of unionization among German workers. We conclude that while there are elements of stability to the German coordinated market economy, Germany increasingly exhibits substantial dualization, liberalization, inequality, and precarity.

Over the last few decades, precarious work rose as an important feature of socioeconomic insecurity in contemporary Europe. The following study asks: How do labor market institutions and labor market conditions shape work precarity in Europe? This research captures the elusive concept of precarious work by measuring the degree to which a job (1) is insecure and uncertain, (2) offers poor prospects of career mobility, and (3) puts workers in an economically insecure position with low pay. Building on two theoretical paradigms, the Varieties of Capitalism and the Power Resource Theory, this study derives and tests hypotheses about how macro-level factors shape the variation in the distribution of precarious work in 32 European countries. Combining individual-level data from the 2010 European Working Conditions Survey with country-level data from multiple sources, my findings suggest that work precarity decreases in countries with high percentages of employees in all enterprises receiving continual training, high percentages of all enterprises providing on-the-job training for employees, and high levels of spending on active labor market policies.