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We enquire whether short-time work (STW) avoids firings as intended by policymakers and is associated with unintended side effects by subsidising some establishments and locking in some employees. Additionally, where it was feasible, establishments used working from home (WFH) to continue working without risking an increase in COVID-19 infections and allowing employed parents to care for children attending closed schools.

Using 21 waves of German high-frequency establishment panel data collected during the COVID-19 crisis, we investigate how STW and WFH are associated with hirings, firings, resignations and excess labour turnover (or churning).

Our results show the important influences of STW and working from home on employment dynamics during the pandemic. By means of STW, establishments are able to avoid an increase in involuntary layoffs and hiring decreases significantly. In contrast, WFH is associated with a rise in resignations, as can be expected from a theoretical perspective.

While most of the literature on STW and WFH is unrelated and remains descriptive, we consider them in conjunction and conduct panel data analyses. We apply data and methods that allow for the dynamic pattern of STW and working from home during the pandemic. Furthermore, our data include relevant establishment-level variables, such as the existence of a works council, employee qualifications, establishment size, the degree to which the establishment was affected by the COVID-19 crisis, industry affiliation and a wave indicator for the period the survey was conducted.

It is analyzed whether working from home improves or impairs the job satisfaction and the work–life balance and under which conditions.

Blocks of influences on job satisfaction and work–life balance – personal traits, job characteristics, skills and employment properties – are estimated separately and in combination. To select the variables, the least angle regression is applied. The entropy balancing approach is used to determine causal effects. The study investigates whether imbalances are determined by private or job influences, whether firm-specific regulations and the selected control group affect the results and whether it only takes place during leisure time.

No clear effects of remote work on job satisfaction are revealed, but the impact on work–life balance is generally negative. If the imbalance is conditioned by private interests, this is not corroborated in contrast to job conditioned features. Employees working from home are happier than those who want to work at home, job satisfaction is higher and work–life balance is not worse under a strict contractual agreement than under a nonbinding commitment.

A wide range of personality traits, skills, employment properties and job characteristics are incorporated as determinants. The problem of causality is investigated. It is analyzed whether the use of alternative control and treatment groups leads to different results. The empirical investigation is based on new German data with three waves.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of key labor institutions on the occurrence and extent of temporary employment.

In a new departure, this study uses a zero-inflated negative binomial (ZINB) model given that most establishments are non-users of either fixed-term contracts (FTCs) or temporary agency workers.

This study examines the potential impact of works councils and unions on the use and intensity of use of FTCs and temporary agency work. There is a little indication that these variables are correlated with the use/non-use of either type of temporary work, especially in the case of FTCs. Collective bargaining displays different relationships with their intensity of use: a negative association for sectoral bargaining and FTCs and the converse for firm-level bargaining and agency temps. Of more interest, however, is the covariation between the number of temporary employees and the interaction between works councils and product market volatility. The intensity of use of agency temps (FTCs) is predicted to rise (fall) as volatility increases whenever a works council is present. These disparities require further investigation but most likely reflect differences in function, with agency work being more directed toward the protection of an arguably shrinking core and fixed-term contacts encountering resistance to their increased use as a buffer stock. The two types of temporary employment are seemingly non-complementary, an interpretation that receives support from the study’s further analysis of FTC flow data.

The non-complementarity of the two types of contract is the hallmark of this paper.

The first study to deploy a ZINB model to examine both the occurrence and incidence of temporary work.

This paper is a cross‐national study of the incidence of part‐time work. The purpose of this paper is to investigate to what extent the difference between Germany and The Netherlands can be explained from the demand side of the labour market.

Several motives of employers for the introduction of part‐time jobs are distinguished. Their relevance is tested by means of firm‐level data for the two countries within the framework of a multivariate analysis.

The study finds that, in The Netherlands, part‐time jobs are more widespread than in Germany. The reasons for this difference are diverse: the difference in industrial structure (more manufacturing in Germany, more services in The Netherlands), less working students in Germany, and probably more reluctance on the side of German employers to meet the preferences of their workers.

The paper fills a gap in the literature on part‐time work, especially about the importance of institutions differing between the countries. This evidence may be useful in designing policies to increase the incidence of part‐time work.

In Germany, the economic crisis 2008/09 was restricted to export-oriented industries such as automotive, chemistry, and mechanical engineering and hence to industries with a high proportion of qualified employees. Therefore, we expect the most current crisis to have a reversed effect on the relative earnings position between more and less qualified in contrast to a development that favored the more qualified since the beginning of the 1980s. Our empirical study is based on the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) Establishment Panel, a representative German establishment level panel data set that surveys information from almost 16,000 personal interviews with high ranked managers.

Despite the “German Job Miracle,” conditional difference-in-differences estimations to control for observed and unobserved heterogeneity reveal substantial employment reductions in establishments affected by the economic crisis. Falls in employment are strongest in plants with a relatively low proportion of qualified workers. Furthermore, our results indicate that the economic crisis is associated with a decline in wages, but only in those establishments that do not operate working time accounts. In sum, we do not find evidence for the current crisis having a reversed effect on the relative earnings position. Obviously once again, the higher qualified are better off than the lower qualified.

After a brief glance at the global labour market after the financial meltdown the paper aims to explain some general mechanisms of short‐time work in Germany. Furthermore it seeks to present an overview of the costs of short‐time work for the establishments with respect to the latest labour market reforms in Germany. In the multivariate analyses with the IAB Establishment Panel the paper aims to identify the determinants of short‐time work and its intensity in Germany. Thus it's goal is to contribute to the discussion of the modified and amended legislative framework for short‐time work.

The microeconometric analysis is based on data from the IAB Establishment Panel, a representative survey of the labour demand in Germany. With data from the survey waves 2008‐2010 the probability of the use of short‐time work with probit regression models and its intensity with truncated regression models are explained.

The manufacturing industry as a German key industry was more affected than other sectors and suffered even harder. Despite the fact that the German labour administration has successfully reduced the bureaucracy of short‐time work, the programme is still rather adopted by bigger establishments. German establishments have utilized their flexibility reserves and complementary short‐time work to protect their core staff during the crisis. There is also some empirical evidence that the establishments tried to avoid brain drains. With the first signs of a recovery of the economy at the beginning of 2010 the establishments benefitted a lot from that strategy as they were instantly able to satisfy increasing demands in their markets again. Empirical evidence is also found that establishments made more intensive use of short‐time work the harder they were suffering from the crisis.

For the first time the latest data from the survey wave 2010 of the IAB Establishment Panel is used and compared with the 2009 survey wave. The structure of the panel questionnaire allows the implementation of some specific questions concerning the use of short‐time work. The IAB Establishment Panel has a sample size of approximately 16,000 cases.

Advanced education is often thought to respond to the demands of the economy, market forces create new occupations, and then universities respond with new degrees and curricula aimed at training future workers with specific new skills. Presented here is comparative research on an underappreciated, yet growing, concurrent alternative process: universities, with their global growth in numbers and enrollments, in concert with expanding research capacity, create and privilege knowledge and skills, legitimate new degrees that then become monetized and even required in private and public sectors of economies. A process referred to as academization of occupations has far-reaching implications for understanding the transformation of capitalism, new dimensions of social inequality, and resulting stratification among occupations. Academization is also eclipsing the more limited professionalization processes in occupations. Additionally, it fuels further expansion of advanced education and contributes to a new culture of work in the 21st century. Commissioned detailed German and US case studies of the university origins and influence on workplace consequences of seven selected occupations and associated knowledge, skills, and degrees investigate the academization process. And to demonstrate how universal this could become, the cases contrast the more open and less-restrictive education and occupation system in the US with the centralized and state-controlled education system in Germany. With expected variation, both economies and their occupational systems show evidence of robust academization. Importantly too is evidence of academic transformations of understandings about approaches to job tasks and use of authoritative knowledge in occupational activities.

Many British employers are less than enthusiastic about the Government's proposals to abolish the 26 wages councils which set statutory minimum wage rates for 2.5 million employees. In its response to the Department of Employment's Wages Councils: 1988 consultation document, the Institute of Personal Management continues to reject a “blanket” approach of total abolition of all wage's councils. The I.P.M.'s view, first formed in 1982 after a major review of the operation of wages councils, is in line with the recommendation of the House of Commons Employment Committee in 1985 that it is right to review and reform but not abolish wages councils.