Search results

This paper analyses the effects of both training and overeducation on upward mobility in the internal labour market, the professional market and the “supplementary labour market”. The latter segment can be considered as a broadly defined secondary labour market as it is not restricted to the low‐level unskilled jobs only. This broader definition – also found in initial segmentation theory – allows for the changed character of the secondary labour market in the industrialized countries. As expected, “career training” influences upward mobility positively. However, contrary to the predictions of segmentation theory, particularly in the supplementary labour market career training is a means of gaining promotion to a higher level job. Overeducation also affects upward mobility positively, which indicates that overeducation is to some extent a temporary phenomenon at the individual level. However, this also holds in particular in the supplementary segment of the labour market. The estimation results show that the supplementary labour market is less of a dead end than the segmentation theory predicts and is a more valuable place to get training than has been recognized. The supplementary market probably plays an important role in the transition process between initial education and the labour market. Although workers may be initially overeducated in their first jobs, a supplementary segment job could be an attractive step towards reaching a more suitable position in the labour market.

The purpose of this paper is to characterise the position of highly educated African migrants in the Finnish labour market and to examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on that position.

The paper is based on the biographical work stories of 17 highly educated African migrant workers in four occupation areas in Finland: healthcare, cleaning, restaurant and transport. The sample was partly purposively and partly theoretically determined. The authors used content driven thematic analysis technique, combined with by the biographical narrative concept of turning points.

Using the case of highly educated African migrants in the Finnish labour market, the authors show how student migration policies reinforce a pattern of division of labour and occupations that allocate migrant workers to typical low skilled low status occupations in the secondary sector regardless of level of education, qualification and work experience. They also show how the unique labour and skill demands of the COVID-19 pandemic incidentally made these typical migrant occupations essential, resulting in increased employment and work security for this group of migrant workers.

This research and the authors’ findings are limited in scope owing to sample size and methodology. To improve applicability of findings, future studies could expand the scope of enquiry using e.g. quantitative surveys and include other stakeholders in the study group.

The paper adds to the knowledge on how migration policies contribute to labour market dualisation and occupational segmentation in Finland, illustrated by the case of highly educated African migrant workers.

A central issue of public policy in relation to employment behaviour, particularly in the United States and Britain since the 1960s, has been the question of how to deal with discrimination against minority groups. The latter may be taken to include women, coloured employees, immigrants, foreign workers, the young and the elderly, but in this paper we concentrate on race and sex discrimination which have tended to receive most attention from both academics and policy‐makers. Further, attention is focused on the USA and Britain, partly because there is more evidence on the workings of equal opportunity legislation in the USA than in any other country, and partly for the reason that developments in Britain appear to mirror those in the USA. Since it is difficult, if not impossible, to isolate the precise extent of discrimination at the macro‐level, on account of variations in personal characteristics and establishment variables, detailed analysis of the operation of local labour markets and individual enterprises and establishments then becomes crucial. Here a feature of recent empirical work has been the emphasis placed on the internal labour market (ILM) and the related concept of the dual labour market (DLM). This is, in fact, highly relevant to equal opportunity legislation not only because it is at the level of the individual organisation or unit of employment that the laws are to be applied but also because, as will be outlined below, the legislation appears to have certain features which are consistent with a dualist interpretation of the operation of the labour market and the emphasis on equality of training and promotion opportunities is most appropriate and significant in the context of a well‐developed internal labour market.

In neo‐classical economic theory labour is a commodity and the ultimate value of the employer's services is determined by the sales value of the product of these services: the cost of supply reflects both the disutility of work for the recruit and his equalisation of net advantages between jobs. For modern labour economists the assumption that entrepreneurs require identical inputs of labour and the new recruits will therefore possess similar skills (the conditions of free competition) is an unrealistic one. Hence segmental labour market theory has grown out of the need to explain differences between shared needs and commonalities within each group of consumers (employers) on the one hand and suppliers (employees) on the other. In this way it has been possible to carry on assuming the existence of perfect competition on both sides of the market within the boundaries of labour markets thus defined.

The critique of the neo‐classical theory of the labour market has been growing in strength in recent years. Two main strands can be identified. The American traditions emphasise the role of the production process of firms or industries, either in terms of its task requirements (Doeringer and Piore 1971), or the mode of labour process control (Edwards 1979). The British tradition emphasises the role of trade unions and the character of the industrial relations system (Rubery 1978; Nolan 1983). By looking at one industry — construction — and thereby controlling for production process and industrial relations system, this article suggests that firm type, in interaction with the product market, is also an important factor in generating non competing labour markets.

In recent years a considerable amount of work has been done in Britain and America utilising dual labour market theory. In America, the ideas of Doeringer and Piore have been taken up by radical economists such as Edwards and Bluestone, while in Britain a group of Cambridge economists have also been seeking to develop the theory. These studies have all retained the basic duality incorporated in the theory by Doeringer and Piore. Moreover, the work of Barron and Norris, Bosanquet and Doeringer and Blackburn and Mann has provided some qualified empirical support to the notion of two separate labour markets.

A large number of topics could legitimately be included under the umbrella title of this article. However, the coverage inevitably reflects the writer's interests, and the paper thus examines the effects of technological change on employment, earnings, and the structure of labour markets. The article has four main sections. The first examines changes in the occupational structure of employment and discusses the structuralist hypothesis that technical progress shifts the occupational demand for labour in such a way as to create permanent unemployment. The second section looks at how technical progress has affected employment and earnings at the level of the industry. The third section takes up the notion of the dual labour market and discusses the extent to which innovation has been an important force generating divisions in the labour market. Finally the implications for government policy are examined.

Purpose – This chapter explores the nature of dualism as it operates in post-Katrina New Orleans. In particular, the chapter suggests that the combination of the push toward a tourism and services dependent economy and the failure to regulate labor markets has created an especially detrimental situation for both workers and the long-term development of the city.

Design/methodology – To explore dualism in sectors and employment, this chapter applies survey methods to three areas of the New Orleans economy: food service, construction, and manufacturing. Survey methods vary slightly across sectors, due to the ease or difficulty of applying random sampling methods in each context. The surveys were applied anonymously by trained interviewers, and additional information from qualitative interviews and focus groups was also included.

Findings – Without regulation of labor markets and efforts to sustain and expand sectors characterized by decent livelihoods, New Orleans working conditions and development will continue to decline.

Originality/value – This chapter offers an original application of theories of dualism in development and labor markets. In development, dualism refers to sectoral division between high-value, cosmopolitan activities and low-productivity sectors, with few prospects for growth or employment. In labor markets, dualism characterizes the distinction between well-remunerated jobs with opportunities for decent livelihoods and other jobs that are precarious and vulnerable. The chapter also provides results from original surveys, interviews, and focus groups.

This paper aims to study the effect of family socioeconomic status (SES) on academic and labor market outcomes.

The authors used a rich data set of administrative records for test scores, individual background and adult earnings of a cohort of agents, covering a period spanning the agents' upper-secondary education and their early years in the labor market.

The authors find that students with the highest SES obtained a 1.5 standard deviations higher score in the college admission test than students who had the same academic outcomes in the eighth grade test but belong to the lowest SES. Similarly, among students that obtained the same scores in the college admission test, those with the highest SES earned monthly wages 0.7 standard deviations higher than those with the lowest SES.

The findings highlight that family socioeconomic background continues to influence outcomes during individuals’ upper secondary education and early years in the labor market.

In a perfectly operating labour market, one of perfect competition and information and unfettered labour mobility, labour flows in the direction of the highest price employers are willing to pay; as labour becomes scarce in the sending area and plentiful in the receiving area, the price of that labour, wages, tend to equalise.