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Automating workplaces that results in a loss of jobs has become a topic of public debate and study but has paid little attention to differential impacts on age groups. This paper applies OECD data on the risk of jobs being automated to Australian longitudinal survey data following 15 years old students over a ten-year period as they enter the job market. Whilst in the early stages of their working lives, these young Australians often worked in jobs projected to be at high risk of automation, they gradually moved into jobs and occupations projected to be less exposed to automation. Young Australians were also less likely to work in jobs at risk of automation than the average Australian. Besides socio-demographic factors, including educational attainment but also domestic wealth, the incidence and kind of computer use at home were associated with working in jobs at a higher or lower risk of automation, as were young workers' type of employment contract and whether young employees changed employers. Whilst suggestions of large-scale job losses owing to automation may be exaggerated, the socio-economic divide that extends to exposure to at risk occupations ought to be a matter of policy concern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: An ageing workforce is a challenge for businesses that are increasingly expected to adapt workplaces to enable employees to remain in work longer. Emerging evidence highlights employer practices to attract or retain older workers. This paper explores employers’ motivations for introducing measures to accommodate an older workforce in three European case study countries. Objectives: The objective is to illustrate and understand different approaches to, and stages in, adjusting workplaces to accommodate an ageing workforce. Methods/Approach: The study combines case studies, including site visits and interviews, with expert consultations. Results: The research finds marked between-country differences, with United Kingdom case studies highlighting a strong emphasis on age-neutral practices shaped by legislation; age-confident practices in Germany resulting from collaborative arrangement between employers and trades unions (with legislation permissive towards age discrimination); business in Spain remaining relatively inactive, despite evidence of people expecting to work longer in life. Conclusions: Diverging employer motivations and responses to the challenge of an ageing workforce risk a multi-speed Europe in age-confident workplace innovation. A concerted effort that draws on the multiple factors that motivate initiative would be required to achieve good working conditions for older workers across Europe.

The article informs about a study focusing on mapping Australia's older, low-income renters. Topics include the demographic profile of this group, their housing needs, and the geographic distribution of such renters across different states and territories. The study highlights the challenges these renters face, with a projected increase in their numbers and the need for innovative housing solutions to support their wellbeing as they age.

Debates about the Global Financial Crisis of 2007 have pointed at institutional and individual-behavioural factors as its causes. Using the British Household Panel Survey, this article highlights marked differences in perceptions of societal and economic fairness among financial services employees in investment or management positions in the United Kingdom and the general working population at the brink of the Global Financial Crisis. Panel data analysis suggests that financial services and occupations did not necessarily attract employees with pro-market attitudes, but that employment in these institutions and occupations made it more likely that employees came to display these perceptions, contributing to the construction of a distinct attitudinal profile of finance employees. Keywords financial crisis, investment banking, panel analysis, social attitudes, United Kingdom, Introduction The Global Financial Crisis (GFC) that started in 2007 triggered a very public soul-searching in Europe and the United States as to who may need to bear responsibility for [...]

Skilled migration is an important strategy in developed economies seeking to address skills shortages and population ageing. Research on the labour market outcomes of skilled migrants tends to focus on employers' devaluation of skills without considering the role of immigration policy in the migration process. Moreover, there is little understanding of whether efforts to meet employer demands for local qualifications improve labour market outcomes. Drawing on a study on skilled migrants sponsored under the State‐Specific and Regional Migration Scheme in the regional state of South Australia, we explore the shaping of skills and skills recognition in the migration journey, particularly migrants' strategy of reskilling in response to employer demands for local qualifications. Our logistic regressions on the association between the acquisition of Australian qualifications and labour market outcomes reveal only marginal returns to these efforts. We argue that Australia should consider developing a more coherent skilled migration process to better harness the human capital of skilled migrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Youth and adolescence are associated with significant changes in a person's life. According to risk theory, the changes experienced by young people today are fundamentally different from those experienced by previous generations and entail a greater degree of uncertainty. In this paper, survey and interview data are used to describe how contemporary risk experiences of young people in Britain differ from those of older generations, highlighting, in particular, their greater frequency and difference in type. Young people are also more likely to be worried about risk, and this remains the case well beyond the years of adolescence. In dealing with these real or anticipated risks, young and adolescent people turn to the traditional sources of family and friends to obtain advice. Using career decisions as a case study, we show that, whereas young people and their parents often share their risk assessments as they take into account each other's decision-making context, understanding is reduced if career paths diverge. (Contains 3 notes, 3 tables and 2 figures.)

The article offers alternative housing news brief as of June 2022. Topics discussed include precarious housing has negative impacts on the health, safety and wellbeing of older people, while also undermining their capacity to age well in place; and Reforms to the private rental sector to provide greater protection for tenants and more flexible financing models can also contribute to improving affordable housing options for older Australians.

Welfare policy in the United States has moved from passive transfer payments to 'activating' welfare recipients toward greater self-sufficiency. Using meta-analysis, we assess around 100 mandatory U.S. welfare-to-work programs, which were evaluated by random assignment, to identify those performing best and worst in terms of their effects on participants' earnings and the proportion of participants moving off welfare. Controlling for participant and site characteristics, the program features that differentiate 'good' from 'bad' programs are found to be whether the interventions increased the use of sanctions, job search, and work experience, which increases the size of program effects, and whether they incorporated financial incentives, which reduces program effect sizes. However, rather than abandoning financial incentives wholesale, we argue for a better balance of welfare reform measures to help to reduce the risks of poverty and to community cohesion, as well as ensure greater self-sufficiency. Keywords: meta-analysis, welfare-to-work, evaluation, random assignment, United States

The present and future security of employee-pension funding remains at the forefront of public debate across Europe and beyond. In the United Kingdom, to finance future pension entitlements it has been suggested that the state pension age be increased. This paper presents the results of analyses of four major national social surveys that have explored the working and living conditions of workers in paid employment after the state pension age. Comparing the circumstances of these workers with workers just below that age illustrates the extent to which it constitutes a break in the working and domestic lives of older people. The findings suggest that, in order to accommodate older workers in the workplace, more attention may need to be placed on informal as well as contractual arrangements of flexible working. Beyond part-time working, older workers rarely take up additional or alternative flexible working arrangements. At the same time, older workers continue to experience housework as burdensome, while in partnered households the gendered division of domestic labour prevails. Research and policy have yet to consider in depth these risks associated with working longer in life. KEY WORDS--older workers, extended working life, state pension age, flexible working.