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The purpose of this paper is to explore the long-run relationship between unemployment rate (UR) and labor force participation rate (LFPR) for men and women in Canada. Given that there are differences in the URs and participation rates of men and women, the authors perform separate analysis for them also.

The authors use co-integration analysis to investigate the existence of a long-run relationship between UR and LFPR in Canada using time series monthly data for the past 40 years.

The finding that there is long-run relationship between UR and LFPR leads the authors to doubt the pertinence of the unemployment invariance hypothesis for Canada. The authors further find evidence for added-worker effect for men and discouraged-worker effect for women in Canada and the authors elaborate on the possible explanations for this seemingly contradictory finding.

The lack of support for the unemployment invariance hypotheses implies that changes in the participation rate which may be due to aging population, policies of early retirement or constraints on working time will affect the UR in the long run.

This paper investigates the unemployment invariance hypothesis in Canada to come up with policy implications about long-run UR. The authors further elaborate on the possible explanations for the added-worker effect for men and the discouraged-worker effect for women that the authors find in this study.

The purpose of this paper is to establish the concept of unemployment defined by the International Labour Organisation appears to be too narrow within the context of many African countries including Ghana. This phenomenon tends to put many jobless adults into the discouraged worker category thereby giving a misleading picture about the unemployment situation in these countries. In addition, the structure of the labour market in many African countries is such that informality takes the face of unemployment.

The paper uses a scatter plot and simple correlation analysis to show a trade-off between informality or vulnerability of employment and unemployment rates in Africa. The paper also adopts descriptive approach based on simple diagrams to show the extent of discouraged worker effect on the phenomenon of unemployment.

The paper finds a significantly negative correlation between unemployment and informality in Africa. Beside the high level of informality that hides the face of unemployment, the exclusion of many discouraged workers in estimating unemployment underrates the seriousness of the phenomenon. The paper therefore recommends the adoption of a broader definition of unemployment that accounts for discourage workers and underemployment to show the true picture of labour market challenge in Africa. Additionally, targeted programmes to support and transform the informal sector is required to make it a more attractive means of employment rather than being seen as a refuge point for the unemployed in Africa.

The observation that unemployment should be looked at from a broader perspective that accounts for discourage workers to inform policy design forms a base of the paper’s contribution to the body of literature. In addition, the high level of informality that hides the problem of unemployment shows that labour market challenges should not be restricted to unemployment but low quality of employment that characterises informality as well.

Our main purpose is to test the unemployment invariance hypothesis in Italy.

This paper provides an empirical investigation of the unemployment and labor force participation in Italy.

Cointegration analysis results strongly suggest a clear long-run relationship between unemployment and labor force participation revealing a persistent and general added worker effect.

Our results seem to confute the unemployment invariance hypothesis.

The purpose of this study is to examine the existence of discouraged worker effect hypothesis and unemployment invariance hypothesis in Africa, including its five regional groups. Specifically, the study tests the existence of co-integration between different categories of labour force participation and unemployment rate, total male and female labour force participation and the unemployment rate for age brackets 15–24, 15–64 and 15+, respectively.

The study uses the data of 52 countries in Africa which cover the period from 1991 to 2018. Three co-integration estimation techniques namely, the Kao co-integration test, Pedroni co-integration test and Westerlund co-integration test are used to validate the existence of co-integration between the labour force participation and unemployment rate. The dynamic ordinary least square is further used to explore the impact of the unemployment rate on labour force participation, while the pooled ordinary least squares (POLS) that accounts for individual country and time effects is employed for robustness check.

Except for Southern Africa, it is found that the discouraged worker effect hypothesis holds in Africa and the rest of its regions. This suggests that there is a long-run relationship between labour force participation rate and unemployment rate irrespective of age group and gender classifications. To some extent, the authors discover the existence of cross-sectional dependence in the panel. There is also an inverse relationship between labour force participation and the unemployment rate. This implies that when the unemployment rate is high, labour force participation tends to decline. The results are, however, sensitive to the choice of estimation method.

The study is limited to the examination of linear co-integration between labour force participation and the unemployment rate in Africa and its five regions. The future study can investigate the possibility of a nonlinear or an asymmetric relationship between labour for participation and the unemployment rate.

Thus, a policy framework that would generate employment creation is greatly required in Africa.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is a pioneer work that addresses the issue of co-integration between labour force participation and unemployment rate for Africa and its five regions taking into consideration gender and age brackets of labour force participation and unemployment.

The purpose of this paper is to outline the study to determine whether the dual earner model better offsets the actual risk of unemployment compared to other household models.

The authors linked the partner effect (household type) with macroeconomic institutional settings, such as employment protection, the active labour market policy, economic growth rate and globalisation, to study how these micro- and macro-level factors influence the unemployment risk of individuals.

Using European Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS) microdata for Finland from 2005 to 2013 and a multilevel modelling technique, the authors found that the partner effect is an important regulator of unemployment risks, but the effect is modified by institutional factors. Dual earners and breadwinners experience a less significant effect from employment protection legislation regulation and other external factors on the increase or decrease in unemployment risk compared to singles. The authors also found that unemployed singles are more exposed and vulnerable to fluctuations caused by economic events.

In this way, this paper contributes to the sociological theory of labour markets and a better understanding of how different household types buffer and mediate the risks of unemployment. The authors used the EU-LFS and novel multilevel analysis statistical solutions to determine the impact of macro- and micro-level factors. The case of Finland may also be of broader interest to researchers and policy-makers because of the long and strong tradition of the dual earner employment pattern and strong macro-economic fluctuations.

The supply side of the labor market has too often been neglected in considering the effects of minimum wage legislation. Minimum wage effects on unemployment have been studied extensively, and the unemployment rate has been related in turn to the labor force participation rate. But the relationship between minimum wages and labor force participation has been almost completely ignored in the published literature.

Household arrangements and human capital investment decisions of young Italians with a high school diploma are analysed. A model of the choices of residing with parents or forming a new family, jointly with those of investing in either work experience, or further education, or stopping investment is estimated. The results show that family background has a major impact on the decision to study, housing costs induce co‐residence, and unemployment increases the probability of studying. Education policies subsidising university studies on a merit ground would thus reduce income inequality, housing allowances would favour marriage, and labour policies would have the side‐effect of decreasing university dropouts.

We test the pertinence of the unemployment invariance hypothesis (UIH) for a set of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries.

We empirically investigate the nexus between unemployment and labour force participation employing structural vector autoregressive methods for panel data.

We find that shocks in unemployment produce long-lasting, negative effects on participation, testifying to a discouraged worker effect.

Our results do not support the validity of the UIH in high-income economies. This has relevant implications for policy making and macroeconomic models.