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This research focuses on the extent sharing economy transforms employability for women impacted by domestic and reproductive work. The authors explore the experience of mothers, of how digital peer-to-peer (P2P) platforms can affect their self-perceived employability and skills deterioration by unlocking human capital through technology acceptance.

This study adopted a pragmatism-based approach incorporating using a single-case study research design with the Gioia methodology. It utilised a semi-structured telephone survey to collect data to explore the decisions around usage of a newly developed mobile P2P app, aiming to support employability among mothers. Analysis was conducted inductively using thematic analysis and partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM).

The study finds that mothers experience high rates of continued labour market attachment on a casual or part-time basis, difficulty in juggling family and work, and high levels of concern both about future employment/entrepreneurial opportunities and expected stress in balancing dual roles of carer and earner. While mothers are interested in using new sharing economy technologies to reduce skills deterioration and improve signalling, the authors find that there were both technology and non-technology related barriers. These included trust and security, life-stage mismatch, time poverty and limitation of service offerings.

This research was limited to mothers in one state in Australia and by the case study research design, the measurement model and the self-report nature of the data collection. Hence, the findings may lack generalisability in other contexts. It also limits the ability to make conclusions regarding causality.

This exploratory study contributes to research in the intersection between human resources (HR) and entrepreneurship by illustrating how sharing economy platforms can offer women a means to overcome the issues of signalling and skills deterioration in relation to aspects of human capital theory by developing new skills that may act as positive signals signal to potential employers or investors. Additionally, the social interactions between mothers, through technology adoption, can provide a basis for improving future self-employment or entrepreneurship and employability.

This study uses a mixed methods approach to investigate the pedagogical approaches and teaching practices that the English Department at a private Lebanese university implemented to rectify the deteriorating speaking skills of their students during the first few months of the lockdown in Lebanon between March and June 2020. The data consisted of semi-structured interviews with English instructors, the speaking assessment scores, and the English peer support program (PSP) enrollment records. Qualitative analysis of the interviews identified the main challenges that the English instructors faced during their transition from face-to-face (FTF) to distance education. The analysis also identified the intervention strategies that were implemented to overcome these barriers to learning and adapt to and even benefit from computer-mediated communication (CMC) instruction and other technological resources to develop and improve the oral proficiency and fluency of tertiary English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students. The quantitative analysis referred to the average percentage variation of the pre-test and post-test scores of the speaking assessment to track the improvement (or lack thereof) of the students’ speaking skills across four semesters, prior to and after the intervention. A one-way ANOVA test was also conducted for the enrollment records of the English PSP and speaking assessment scores that showed that the program was an effective form of intervention that helped struggling students to at least prevent the further deterioration of their speaking capabilities in English. These findings show that for students to develop and enhance their speaking skills in English in a distance education context and during emergency times, efforts need to be made to reduce the hindering psychological factors and address all technology-related barriers that disrupt the online language learning environment and process.

This paper empirically explores the role of skill losses during unemployment behind firms' behaviour in interviewing long-term unemployed

The analysis makes use of the Work Employment Relations Survey in the UK, while it applies a panel probit modelling approach to estimate the empirical findings.

The findings document that skill losses during long-term unemployment reduce the likelihood of an interview, while they emphasize the need for certain policies that could compensate for this deterioration of skills. For robustness check, the estimation strategy survives the examination of the same predictors under different types of the working environment.

The original values of the work 1 combines for the first time both duration and technology as predictors of interview probability. Until now, the independent variables were used to test whether an individual has managed to exit unemployment, thus skipping the step of the interview process.

The research measures the diffusion of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and changes in skills in the UK during the 1980s. Using input‐output data and the Census of Population, the indicators are constructed according to 25 reclassified industrial divisions for the whole economy. These indicators show that accompanying the diffusion of ICTs there was a shift from motor skills (relatively decreasing) to cognitive skills (relatively increasing). Diffusion of ICT during the 1980s is captured through the amount of computer equipment usage. The skill changes are examined through multi‐faceted aspects: occupational change; educational improvement; increased female participation; and employment change by industry. The research sheds light on two issues analysed in relation to technological change and skills change: measurement of technological change should be considered as a complex pattern rather than a monotonically increasing pattern; and skill changes should be examined through multi‐faceted aspects rather than any single aspect.

Analyses the role of training in forming under‐employment, which is a basic characteristic of an institutional labour market. Compares the basic assumptions of an institutional labour market to those of a neoclassical labour market. Discusses in detail the institutional framework for on‐the‐job training. Finally, considers policy issues relating to job training.

In the first of our two articles on skill loss we concentrated on two kinds of investigation, surveys of the opinions of experienced individuals and controlled, but often highly artificial, experiments. In this the second article we shall describe the results of some studies using the “natural experiment” technique. Carrying out a natural experiment is rather like studying an eclipse or an earthquake. There is nothing the scientist can do about arranging the events, as is the rule in the classic laboratory experiment; one simply takes things as they come but hopefully with telescopes, seismographs or whatever appropriate measuring devices suitably deployed to record the events for subsequent analysis.

National Child Development Study (NCDS) data are used to examine the negative impact of time out of paid employment on numeracy, as measured by a maths test at 16 and a functional numeracy test at 37. Restricting the sample to respondents who left full‐time education at 16 and accounting for maths at 16, we found negative correlations between time out of paid employment and adult numeracy scores. Using the whole sample, adult numeracy scores were regressed on maths at 16, family background and adult experiences. The longer the absence from paid employment, the greater the negative impact on adult numeracy. The relationship was strongest for men with poor maths at 16. This suggested that a certain level of maths was needed before skills were retained and not weakened by absence from paid employment. Training offered some protection against skill loss, as did women’s more diverse roles at home and work.

Periodic economic instabilities and structural changes in the labour market have given rise to a variety of forms of job insecurity. This article compares the scarring effects of different forms of job insecurity on future employment chances, and how they vary across education groups.

Using a sample of real vacancies and data collected in a vignette experiment with employers in Switzerland, a country with a strongly developed vocational education and training (VET) system, this article investigates how employers evaluate a period of unemployment, job hopping and work experience in deskilling jobs when hiring candidates.

The findings reveal that work in deskilling jobs is by far more scarring than unemployment or job hopping. The study also demonstrates that applicants with upper secondary vocational education are impacted the greatest by all three forms of job insecurity.

The study makes use of real vacancies. While experiments have the strength of high internal validity, most experimental studies in recruitment research rely on students as respondents. As this study works with real employers hiring for positions it benefits from high external validity.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate which sectors are more vulnerable to human capital depreciation, with an emphasis on potential differences in skills and in ICT intensities.

The authors estimate an extended Mincerian earnings equation based on Neuman and Weiss’s (1995) model using the EU-KLEMS international database for 15 sectors for the period from 1980 to 2005. The authors also test structural ruptures in earnings and human capital depreciation in the labor market per decade controlling by technological intensity.

Human capital depreciation ranges from 1 to 6 percent. It is mainly significant in skill-intensive sectors regardless of the sector’s technological intensity. The analysis of structural breaks shows that human capital value indeed changed from decade to decade. It even appreciated in low skill-intensive sectors in the 1980s and in the high skill-intensive during the 1990s. Appreciation though, was mainly skill-biased.

Information about on-the-job-training and non-cognitive skills that can also affect human capital depreciation are not included due to lack of data.

To prevent human capital from depreciating in particular sectors and periods educational systems should provide the tools for ongoing lifelong learning at all skills levels. Education is subject to dynamic effects that should be addressed to increase the potential benefits of technological change.

First, instead of using cross-section analysis which is considered to be a pitfall in studying the depreciation of knowledge, the authors observe its dynamic on a longitudinal basis. Second, the international macro-sectoral approach goes beyond limited micro-sectoral analysis in certain countries.