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Using a two-year-long longitudinal dataset that follows co-operative education (co-op) students’ employment situations, this paper examines how unemployment in the first scheduled co-op work term is associated with un(der)employment in subsequent work terms. Drawing from unemployment scarring theory, the paper also investigates the role of a work-readiness intervention in reversing the potentially negative consequences of unemployment in the first scheduled co-op work term. The results suggest that unemployment in the first co-op work term is associated with underemployment in a subsequent work term. Compared to those who were employed in their first scheduled work term, students who were initially unemployed were just as likely to be employed in their second work term, but they got jobs later, were in jobs with lower seniority, and were paid less than expected. By the third scheduled work term, employment and underemployment were similar between all groups, except that initially employed students continued to earn more, suggesting an earnings penalty for initial unemployment that is consistent with unemployment scarring theory. Critically, participation in a work-readiness intervention reversed this narrative. Intervention participants did better than their unemployed peers in subsequent work terms, and their employment situation was more like that of the initially employed students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Personnel economics has undoubtedly been one of the major developments in mainstream labour economics in recent decades. Its aim is not simply to report on firms' actual labour management practices but also to prescribe the optimal practices for managers to adopt. The pursuit of this goal has led it to close itself off from other approaches to the analysis of the employment relationship. Drawing on concepts from political science, we show that personnel economics is imbued with a particular conception of politics, even though it goes unacknowledged. Making this point visible enables us to show that other conceptions of politics than that to which personnel economics refers are possible and leads to the acknowledgement of the legitimacy of other points of view in matters of labour management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]