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Informal work, defined as work performed without a formal contract, lowers productivity, reduces tax revenue and hampers economic growth. Reducing informal work is a policy objective in developed and developing countries alike. Yet, particularly since the onset of the global financial crisis in 2008, most socio-economic policy reforms across Europe have reduced the generosity of unemployment benefit schemes and deregulated employment protection. The authors argue that, while such reforms may have contributed to reducing unemployment, they might also have increased the incidence of informal work. Using European Social Survey data for 2004-12, they find that labour protection is effective in reducing informal wage employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article shows how both segregation by sex and segregation by hours shape the occupational space of part-time workers. The level of segregation by sex varies according to the shares of full-time and part-time work in total employment, and the trade-off between increasing the volume of female employment and decreasing segregation by sex is much stronger for full-time work. The author argues that there is less segregation by sex in part-time work than in full-time work, and that it is the gap between the volume of male and female part-time employment that determines the effect of part-time work on segregation in total employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a selective survey of the recent literature on labour market institutions and offers new empirical EU-based evidence on the impact of labour market reforms on employment and labour market adjustment. Although the literature traditionally treats labour market institutions as exogenous, attention shifted recently towards understanding the underlying causes of specific institutional arrangements. As a consequence, the literature highlights the great importance of an efficient policy design exploiting these interactions wisely and identifies general principles for achieving an efficient policy design at both macro and micro levels. Although empirical evidence does not show a major change in terms of intensity of labour market reform after the setting of the Economic and Monetary Union and the creation of the euro, the reforms aiming at strengthening the labour market attachment of vulnerable groups tend to have been successful both in raising their employment and increasing labour market adjustment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we employ a wage-setting approach to analyze the labor market effects of immigration into Germany from 1980 to 2004. This enables us to consider labor market rigidities, which are prevalent in Europe. We find that the elasticity of the wage-setting curve is particularly high for young workers. Moreover, natives and foreigners are imperfect substitutes. The wage and employment effects of immigration depend on the skill structure of the immigrant workforce. Because the foreign labor supply shift has mainly affected the high-skilled labor market segment, the 4 percent increase of the workforce through immigration has not increased either aggregate or foreign unemployment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical studies of interregional mobility routinely use regional unemployment differentials to characterize economic incentives to move between regions. In this paper, we present a new regional labour market indicator computed from survey data in which respondents are asked to evaluate local employment opportunities in their resident municipality and surroundings. The subjective measures of satisfaction with local employment opportunities have positive and significant impact on interregional migration flows, also when controlling for traditional measures of regional labour market conditions, including the regional unemployment rate. Contrary to most European studies, we find that regional labour market conditions have a strong effect on interregional migration flows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past 3 decades, labour supply in Europe has declined by approximately 30% relative to the USA. The decline comes from hours per worker and employment. The present paper uses a matching model to study the effects of labour taxes and unemployment benefits. Labour taxes decrease hours and employment, with overstated adverse effects on hours if extensive margins are not considered. Unemployment benefits decrease employment and increase hours, with understated adverse effects on employment if intensive margins are not considered. In the baseline parameterization, labour taxes and unemployment benefits together explain approximately 75% of the declining labour supply in Europe relative to the USA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at the migrants' occupational integration process. Two main theoretical perspectives are tested: the first one (assimilation view) claims that in the short-run migrants are penalized, but as they settle in the receiving country they get integrated into the host society; the second one (segmented assimilation view) claims that disadvantages persist in the long-run. EU-LFS and ESS data are described and modelled, in order to compare the labour market performances of migrants in four European old-receiving countries (Germany, France, Great Britain and Sweden) and in two new-receiving countries (Spain and Italy) both in a short-term and in a long-run perspective. We find that a) in the short-run, migrants' labour market condition is worst with respect to the natives; b) this gap decreases with older migrants; c) the ethnic penalty disappears with the second generation, when they achieve a level of education comparable to that of the natives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two of the most notable trends in labour markets in Europe are the rise in the number of atypical job contracts (e.g. fixed-term contracts and temporary work) and the increase in job turnover. The concept of 'employment vulnerability' can be used to describe these trends, which weaken the employer-employee relationship. In this article, the authors measure this employment vulnerability, for individual European countries, by creating two indices - an 'employer-related vulnerability index' and a 'job-related vulnerability index' - which are then aggregated to form an overall employment vulnerability index. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines female part-time employment in 23 European countries, distinguishing between 'short' and 'long' part-time employment. The short form, defined as less than 20 hours per week, is associated with the youngest and oldest age groups, slight disability, a higher number of children, lower skill levels, and employment in community, social and personal services. Although the incidence of part-time employment varies considerably across countries, long part-time employment is generally more widespread than short part-time employment, albeit with matching cross-country variations in the incidence of the two types. This suggests that they are complementary, rather than substitutes for one another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European countries currently have segmented labour markets with flexible but insecure -'flexirisky' - jobs, resulting in significant inequality between different categories of workers. Part-time jobs are one example: their flexibility may help workers reconcile work and family life, and increase women's labour force participation, but part-time employment can also result in new forms of inequality, thereby undermining EU equal opportunity policies. Empirically analysing labour market transitions in Denmark, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain, this article shows part-timers - who are mostly women - to be at higher risk of unemployment. It calls for strengthening equality between part-time and full-time workers in terms of employment stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Persons with intellectual disability remain largely excluded from the labour market in the Nordic countries. A review of the existing knowledge base may inform policymakers who try to address this challenge. Method: The study uses a scoping review of 23 articles to summarize three decades of research on employment for persons with intellectual disability in the Nordic countries. Results: Persons with intellectual disability value employment, but school‐related factors may form barriers to labour market participation. Support at the workplace is important but variable. There is a paucity of intervention studies, and few studies focus on supports to bridge the gap between personal capacity and environmental demands. Conclusions: A better coordination between the educational system and the labour market may facilitate higher levels of employment for persons with intellectual disability. Intervention studies that emphasize individualized supports and follow‐up of older employees with intellectual disability are welcomed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disability policy in European countries is displaying a shift towards social investment: increasing human capital and access to the labour market. The reasoning that underlies this transition is that disabled persons would benefit from mainstream employment, but are impeded in traditional policy by deficiencies in labour supply and demand. However, the shift towards more activating policies in many countries is accompanied by a decline in social protection. It is unclear whether social investment may effectively promote the employment chances of disabled persons within this context. The present research examines this question through a quantitative, cross‐sectional, multilevel analysis on microdata from 22 EU countries. Our findings suggest greater activation to predict lower employment chances, while reducing passive support shows mixed effects. Conversely, measures for facilitation in daily life predict greater employment chances, as do measures for sheltered work. These findings raise questions over the value of social investment for disabled persons—and underline the need to overcome broader barriers in the labour market and in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study drew on recurrent debates related to labour market mobility among the unemployed and those outside the labour force and asked to what extent active labour market policies (ALMP) increase employment in these two groups. By utilising new programme‐level data on ALMP, the study analysed the impact of core programmes directed towards registered unemployed; peripheral programmes that target the inactive part of the working age population; and mixed programmes targeting both groups. The programme data were combined with individual‐level panel data from the European Survey on Income and Living Conditions and analysed using multilevel analysis. The main results show that both resources devoted to programmes and their size were related to employment transitions. Transitions among the unemployed were mainly associated with spending on core programmes, whereas the inactive seemed to benefit from increased spending on all types of programmes, as well as increased scope of mixed programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors provide new evidence on youth earnings and labour market volatility, including flows into and out of employment, across Europe during the Great Recession. EU‐SILC data for the period 2004–13 reveal large disparities in volatility levels and trends across European countries. As expected, the Great Recession increased youth labour market volatility, offsetting the trends observed over the previous years of economic prosperity. A variance decomposition exercise points to greater exposure to worker turnover in southern Europe. Fixed effects regression on labour market institutions relates higher unemployment benefits and more stringent employment protection legislation to lower earnings and labour market volatility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article questions whether the dominant policy discourse, in which a normative model of standard employment is counterposed to ‘non‐standard’ or ‘atypical’ employment, enables us to capture the diversity of fluid labour markets in which work is dynamically reshaped in an interaction between different kinds of employment status and work organisation. Drawing on surveys in the UK, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands that investigate work managed via online platforms (‘crowdwork’) and associated practices, it demonstrates that crowdwork represents part of a continuum. Not only do most crowd workers combine work for online platforms with other forms of work or income generation, but also many of the ICT‐related practices associated with crowdwork are widespread across the rest of the labour market where a growing number of workers are ‘logged’. Future research should not just focus on crowdworkers as a special case but on new patterns of work organisation in the regular workforce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors use an original cross-sectional data set to examine the impact of informal and flexible contractual arrangements on the wages of domestic workers hired by private employers in Portugal. OLS estimations suggest that formality benefits workers, whether they have a stable or a flexible contract. However, social and labour market processes help to shape and maintain inequality, especially for migrant workers. Although skills are undervalued and do not generate rewards, higher wages are identified for workers who are engaged in contingent work, work for multiple employers or provide care for the elderly. However, such workers are still subject to exploitation and insecurity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Job polarization instead of pure upgrading is emerging in European industries. This article focuses on polarization of the employment structure and contributes empirical evidence to explain patterns of occupational change in relation to four major groups: managers, clerks, craft workers and manual workers. Building on the structural approach, the author aims to analyse employment dynamics at the sectoral level and shed light on job polarization trends in Europe. Job polarization clearly emerges, mainly in service sectors, and in some European countries it is leading to a rejection of the hypothesis of skill upgrading sustained by the skill-biased technical change paradigm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last three decades, most developed countries have experienced increasing income inequality. Using Danish register data from 1992 to 2007 for all private-sector employees, we confirm that income inequality has increased in Denmark. We also observe an increase in the relative employment of highly educated individuals, as well as differential income growth rates across employee subgroups where, in particular, managers experienced significant real income progression. We use an equilibrium search framework with on-the-job search to study the interplay between skill-upgrading, management compensation, and income inequality. In this model we can determine the management and education premia. We can also show that when our model is exposed to skill-upgrading, it is capable of producing income dynamics similar to those observed in the Danish income distribution. ( JEL J3, J6, M5) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using individual longitudinal European Community Household Panel data for thirteen countries during 1995-2001 and fixed-effects models, I find for men, the permanent job wage premium is higher for younger workers and those who were noncitizens or foreign born; for women, the premium is higher for young workers, short-tenure workers, and those who were noncitizens or foreign born. Thus, the gain to permanent employment is higher for those with less experience in the domestic labor market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reconfiguration of political space lies at the heart of the European project and is the subject of manifold studies on the new shape of the European Union, but relatively little attention has been paid to the ways in which borders are de- and reconstructed in a pan-European labour market. In a pan-European labour market, state borders shift. Postings made via subcontractors and agencies providing temporary workers also rearrange the borders of the firm. However, we know very little about how these bordering practices interact within the pan-European labour market. This study argues that while borders have become porous, their porousness is one-directional, in the sense that it is in favour of capital but impacts negatively on labour rights. In developing a framework for understanding the relationship between changes in sovereign borders and changes in employment relations in the EU, this article integrates insights from international relations, political economy and border research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although field experiments have documented the contemporary relevance of discrimination in employment, theories developed to explain the dynamics of differential treatment cannot account for differences across organizational and institutional contexts. In this article, I address this shortcoming by presenting the main empirical findings from a multi-method research project, in which a field experiment of ethnic discrimination in the Norwegian labour market was complemented with forty-two in-depth interviews with employers who were observed in the first stage of the study. While the experimental data support earlier findings in documenting that ethnic discrimination indeed takes place, the qualitative material suggests that theorizing in the field experiment literature have been too concerned with individual and intra-psychic explanations. Discriminatory outcomes in employment processes seems to be more dependent on contextual factors such as the number of applications received, whether requirements are specified, and the degree to which recruitment procedures are formalized. I argue that different contexts of employment provide different opportunity structures for discrimination, a finding with important theoretical and methodological implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

. Since the onset of the 2008 financial crisis, a further 8 million Europeans have become unemployed. And prolonged recession entails other risks examined here, in terms of labour market exclusion, the economic costs of long-term unemployment, and the extent to which enterprises' job-creating investment potential may become severely constrained. Against this background, the author critically reviews the European policy response with particular attention to the shift to fiscal consolidation since mid-2010 and its long-term implications for Europe's economies, labour markets and societies. Introducing the studies featured in this Special Issue, he draws on their empirical findings to discuss policy options for a reversal of current trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

. Since the 1970s, Europe has been plagued by a chronic unemployment crisis, which has escalated with the current Great Recession. The author discusses a number of relevant elements in this regard, including the extent to which social dialogue and social pacts have been successful in reforming labour markets and pension systems, the effect of active labour market policies and the characteristics of 'resilient' economies. She concludes with the need to rethink social dialogue, social safety nets, the granting of loans - especially to SMEs - and the coordination of macroeconomic policies to increase labour demand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses a cognitive test score, the Swedish Military Enlistment test taken at age 18, to identify whether the ethnic employment and income gap in Sweden is caused by a pre-market skill gap and/or ethnic discrimination. The employment gap and income gap are estimated for males born in Sweden with different ethnic backgrounds: their parents were born in Sweden or in southern Europe or outside Europe. Controlling for the cognitive test score does not affect the ethnic employment gap, and for incomes the ethnic income gap almost disappears. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current similarities among the four southern European EU Member States—Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain—with respect not only to labour market characteristics but also to the institutional arrangements that influence labour supply, utilisation and demand corroborate the concept of a distinctive southern European employment model. Its origins go back to common features in the pattern of socio-economic development and the political history of these countries. In the past 20 years or so, national differences in the pace and content of institutional change have increased diversity within the model and eroded some of its components. They have not, however, destroyed its unity and distinctiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"National employment models" comprise the whole range of institutions that determine labour supply, utilization and demand in different countries. Based on a study of existing typologies of these models, this article explores their workings and their capacity to survive pressures for change. It compares different models' attempts to safeguard decent working conditions in the face of product-market deregulation and rising employment rates of women and older workers. It concludes that it is becoming increasingly difficult for European nation states to reform their employment models from within and argues for more emphasis on positive integration policies at the European level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article outlines various explanations for singling out the right to work from the roster of human rights, and emphasizes the dilemmas associated with regulating the labour market as a barrier to the development of the right. It compares two frameworks that address these concerns from the contrasted perspectives of human rights and employment policy - namely, the General Comment of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the European Employment Strategy. While these approaches are not natural allies, they can complement each other and construct an institutional system guided by the right to work as a superordinate norm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article shows that state control of some industries may have contributed to the increase in European unemployment from the 1970s to the early 1990s. We develop a simple two-sector model, one privately run and one publicly run, that has risk-averse workers directing their search into one of the sectors. Assuming that the privately run sector is less able to insure its employees against uncertainty, we show that aggregate unemployment in this economy increases in response to an increase in economic turbulence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This chapter deals with a fundamental change in young people's transitions to work. Flexible labor markets have led to a diversification of transition patterns, but policy measures are unresponsive to the needs and aspirations of young people. New risks and challenges emerge that are addressed differently in the different European societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union (EU) aspires to be the most competitive, full employment economy in the world and has set a number of ambitious targets to be met by 2010 in order that it can achieve this goal. At the same time, it is pursuing an enlargement policy that will witness the accession of an increasing number of less developed nations. This article explores some of the tensions that exist between these two goals as these are manifest in labour market indicators and finds the likelihood of meeting the deadline set for success remote. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the issue of youth labor market disadvantage in south east Europe. It is noted that the lack of decent work opportunities for young people is indeed one of the most daunting challenges faced by countries in the said subregion. A troubled entry into the world of work has serious welfare repercussions for young people, including a higher risk of income poverty and deterioration of their human and social capital. Yet there has so far been no comprehensive analysis of the problems that young people face in south east European labor markets, largely because the necessary data are simply not available from any integrated, centralized sources.

Books reviewed:Ola Bergstrom and Donald Storrie (eds).Contingent Employment in Europe and the United States.Reviewed by Ian KirkpatrickTonia Novitz.International and European Protection of the Right to Strike.Reviewed by Lord McCarthyDeborah Foster and Peter Scott (eds).Trade Unions in Europe—Meeting the Challenge.Reviewed by Michael GoldJeff Kenner.EU Employment Law. From Rome to Amsterdam and Beyond.Reviewed by Simon DeakinVladimir Gimpelson and Douglas Lippoldt.The Russian Labour Market: Between Transition and Turmoil.Reviewed by Gregory Schwartz [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]