Search results

The purpose of this paper is to show that gig jobs could be considered an alternative way, albeit not the very best, to give work opportunities to older people. This could offset the continuously decreasing income from the pay-as-you-go pension system, which remains the main source of income for older Hungarians.

The paper reviews the most important aspects of employment of older people and highlights the digital divide which still restricts their participation in the labor market. The paper analyzes data from the Hungarian carpooling company Oszkár and compares it with official statistical data from the Hungarian labor market, focusing on the dynamics of the employment of older persons.

The findings show that the alienation of older workers from the gig economy is just transitory, and that an increasing proportion of older gig workers can be anticipated.

Compiling data on the gig economy faces a number of obstacles, as enterprises are disincentivized from revealing all their data.

Older people are more likely to be employed in lower-quality jobs, such as own-account self-employed. They are also increasingly more likely to become gig workers.

The paper articulates the importance of remaining active as one ages and moreover challenges the traditional belief that gig jobs mainly offer opportunities to the younger generations.

The purpose of this paper is to review the results of studies that investigate the most important active labour market policy (ALMP) measures in Germany. A focus is also on programmes devoted to foster entrepreneurship which can make important contributions to a country’s growth and social welfare.

The study relies on quantitative and qualitative assessments and a comparison of results of previous studies on ALMPs.

The available evidence suggests that most ALMP measures increase labour market prospects of the participants. In particular, evaluations of the entrepreneurship promotion activities show high success rates as well as high cost efficiency. The bulk share of participants of entrepreneurship measures is still self-employed after several years and nearly one-third of these businesses had at least one employee. The authors mention problems regarding the evaluation of previous programmes and highlight future challenges of German ALMP.

This is the first study on ALMP that has an extensive and explicit focus on entrepreneurship-promoting programs.

Facing the aging workforce but older workers’ vulnerability in the labor market, this chapter empirically explores factors and policy implications to enhance older workers’ entered employment rates (EER) after exiting the national workforce program. After reviewing older workers’ attributes and the unique methods to train them, the chapter examines demographic, socioeconomic, and program attributions to older workers’ EER, controlling for cyclical changes in the labor market. The chapter relies on three sets of models including logistic regression, multi-level mixed-effect regression, and multilevel mixed effect logistic regression models, as well as longitudinal Workforce Investment Act Standardized Record Data and Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment data. Older dislocated workers and older adults are examined separately. Some Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act training and related service combinations are identified to contribute to older adults and older dislocated workers’ EER and to inform strategic decision-making about future allocations of funds and policy efforts to serve older workers.

The growing awareness in the past few years of the increasingly acute nature of unemployment levels throughout industrial society has been reflected in the adoption by a variety of countries of a number of special work creation schemes for social groups experiencing particular difficulties in finding and sustaining employment. While cynical commentators in individual countries have dismissed in varying degrees such programmes as being essentially synonymous with the special employment measures of the Great Depression, there seems little obvious justification or merit in identifying, for example, Job Creation in Britain with the former Public Works Programme; the Neighbourhood Youth Corps, Emergency Employment Act and the more recent Comprehensive Employment and Training Act in the US with the New Deal Public Relief Acts or the “ArbeitsBeschaffungsMassnahmen” in Germany with the ReichsArbeitDienst. While the new schemes may at their weakest moments reflect a superficial similarity with aspects of such older programmes, there is little doubt that, in the main, job creation measures of whatever type, which have been introduced since the early 1970s, differ in scope, orientation and intention from their traditional public works predecessors. Such an interpretation seems not only to be supported by the fact that countries which introduced such schemes some years ago, are continually updating, revising and refining the structure and conditions of their programme and evaluating their performance in meeting the needs of the client groups but that such early experiences and their subsequent restructurings constitute examples of particular manpower policy initiatives which continue to be followed as operating models for countries newly embarking on programmes of a similar type.

This book is a policy proposal aimed at the democratic left. It is concerned with gradual but radical reform of the socio‐economic system. An integrated policy of industrial and economic democracy, which centres around the establishment of a new sector of employee‐controlled enterprises, is presented. The proposal would retain the mix‐ed economy, but transform it into a much better “mixture”, with increased employee‐power in all sectors. While there is much of enduring value in our liberal western way of life, gross inequalities of wealth and power persist in our society.

We apply a recently suggested econometric approach to measure the effects of active labor market programs on employment, unemployment, and wage histories among participants. We find that participation in most of these training programs produces an initial locking-in effect and for some even a lower transition rate from unemployment to employment upon completion. Most programs, therefore, increase the expected duration of unemployment spells. However, we find that the training undertaken while unemployed successfully increases the expected duration of subsequent spells of employment for many subpopulations. These longer spells of employment come at a cost of lower accepted hourly wage rates.

In this chapter, we evaluate the employment effects of job-creation schemes (JCS) on the participating individuals in Germany. JCS are a major element of active labour market policy in Germany and are targeted at long-term unemployed and other hard-to-place individuals. Access to very informative administrative data of the Federal Employment Agency justifies the application of a matching estimator and allows us to account for individual (group-specific) and regional effect heterogeneity. We extend previous studies for Germany in four directions. First, we are able to evaluate the effects on regular (unsubsidised) employment. Second, we observe the outcomes of participants and non-participants for nearly three years after the programme starts and can therefore analyse medium-term effects. Third, we test the sensitivity of the results with respect to various decisions that have to be made during implementation of the matching estimator. Finally, we check if a possible occurrence of a specific form of ‘unobserved heterogeneity’ distorts our interpretation. The overall results are rather discouraging, since the employment effects are negative or insignificant for most of the analysed groups. One exception are long-term unemployed individuals who benefit from participation at the end of our observation period. Hence, one policy implication is to address the programmes to this problem group more closely.

The goal of the paper is to investigate how reservation wages of older unemployed welfare recipients change once they are no longer subject to standard job search requirements.

The authors apply a regression discontinuity design.

Consistent with theoretical predictions, the authors’ findings indicate that eliminating job search requirements will tend to increase reservation wages.

The results correspond to previous findings in the literature that monitoring leads to lower accepted wages and increased exits rates from unemployment, and that it may be a successful policy measure to keep older workers in the labor market.

Monitoring of job search effort has been shown to be an effective method of activating unemployed people, but little evidence has been found on the effect of activation measures on older workers.

The aim of this paper is to analyse critically the youth labour market (YLM) and the YLM policies in Portugal. The analysis covers essentially the period after 1986, when Portugal entered the European Union.

The paper consists of three main sections. In the first the main players dealt with (government, private sector, third sector) are defined, and the main theories on the YLM exposed. In the second section the evolution of the YLM and of the YLM policies in Portugal, are analysed in three main phases. In the third section the paper's conclusions are presented, and some further research is suggested.

Until 1986 YLM policy in Portugal was almost non‐existent. Then, as a consequence of the adhesion to the European Communities, massive investments began to be made. As a consequence, in the last 20 years, young persons (less than 25 years of age) have been given much more support in the labour market than older persons (more than 25 years‐of‐age). That advantage means that since 1986 quality, and not quantity, is the problem of YLM policies in Portugal.

The study should be complemented with a large microeconomic analysis of the “young” and “old” cohort. The findings suggest that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, “young” persons have been given too much support in the last years, and more support should be given to “older” members of the workforce, especially the least qualified. The problem with the support to “young” people is quality, not quantitiy.

The paper provides an analysis of the development of a Portuguese Education and Training (E&T) strategy. Few studies in the field of E&T and Human Resources Development (HRD) have emanated from Portugal and this paper presents an opportunity to gain an insight into Portuguese developments in the field.