1,721,415 research outputs found
The More Things Change, The More They Stay the Same: Trends in Long-term Employment in the United States, 1969-2002
Full text linkThis study considers whether there has been a decline in the attachment of workers and firms in the United States over the past several decades. Specifically, it compares snapshots of job tenure taken at the end of workers' careers from 1969 to 2002, using data from the Retirement History Survey, the National Longitudinal Survey of Older Men, and the Health and Retirement Study. The primary finding is one of stability in the prevalence of long-term employment relationships for men in the United States. In 1969, average tenure in the longest job for males aged 58-62 was 21.9 years. In 2002, the comparable figure was 21.4 years. Just over half of men ending their careers in 1969 had been with a single employer for at least 20 years; the same is true in 2002. This finding is robust to adjustments for minor differences in question details across data sources and for educational and retirement age changes over this time period.
Minimum Wage Effects on Employment and School Enrollment
Full text linkWe argue in this paper that the focus on employment effects in recent studies of minimum wages ignores an important interaction between schooling, employment, and the minimum wage. To study these linkages, we estimate a conditional logit model of employment and enrollment outcomes for teenagers using state-year observations for the period 1977 to 1989. The results show a negative influence of minimum wages on school enrollment and a positive effect on the proportion of teens neither employed nor in school. We further suggest that our results are consistent with substitution by employers of higher- for lower-skilled teenagers, with the displaced teens ending up both out of work and out of school.
Alternative Labor Market Policies to Increase Economic Self-Sufficiency: Mandating Higher Wages, Subsidizing Employment, and Increasing Productivity
Full text linkI review evidence on alternative labor market policies that could potentially improve economic self-sufficiency via mandating higher wages, subsidizing employment, or increasing productivity. The evidence indicates that the minimum wage is an ineffective policy to promote economic self-sufficiency, entailing employment losses without any corresponding distributional benefits via higher wages. In contrast, living wage laws appear to present a more favorable tradeoff. Labor supply incentives, in particular the EITC, appear effective, as a more generous EITC boosts employment of single mothers and in so doing raises incomes and earnings of low-income families. There is some evidence that wage subsidies increase employment and earnings, but problems of stigmatization resulting from eligibility for wage subsidy programs can dissipate the gains, and wage subsidies entail substantial administrative difficulties. Finally, a newer but growing literature on school-to-work provides some evidence that school-to-work programs boost labor market attachment, skill formation, wages, and earnings.
Ethnicity, Language, and Workplace Segregation: Evidence from a New Matched Employer-Employee Data Set
Full text linkWe describe the construction and assessment of a new matched employer-employee data set (the Decennial Employer-Employee Dataset, or DEED) that we have undertaken as a part of a broad research agenda to study segregation in the U.S. labor market. In this paper we examine the role of segregation by Hispanic ethnicity and language proficiency, contributing new, previously unavailable descriptive information on segregation along these lines, and evidence on the wage premia or penalties associated with this segregation. The DEED is much larger and more representative across regional and industry dimensions than previous matched data sets for the United States, and improvements along both of these dimensions are essential to isolating the importance of segregation by language and ethnicity in the workplace. Our empirical results reveal considerable segregation by Hispanic ethnicity and by English language proficiency. We find that Hispanic workers, but not white workers, suffer wage penalties from employment in a workplace with a large share of Hispanic workers, and even more so a large share of Hispanic workers with poor English language proficiency. In addition, we find that segregation of Hispanic workers among other Hispanics with similar English language proficiency does not reduce the penalties associated with poor own language skills.
How are youth faring in the labor market ? Evidence from around the world
Full text linkThis paper uses a new standardized micro database for a large set of developing countries to (1) describe the patterns of labor market outcomes for youth, and (2) explain the contributions of supply and demand factors to youth outcomes. The paper shows that youth face various difficulties in transitioning to work. This is reflected in their relatively higher unemployment rate, higher incidence of low paying or unpaid work, and a large share of youth who are neither working nor in school. This is especially true for young girls who are found outside the labor market, some engaged in home production. Finally, the paper also finds that cross-country estimates show that changes in the youth relative cohort size is unlikely to have a large effect on how youth are faring in the labor market.Labor Markets,Youth and Governance,Adolescent Health,Population Policies,Children and Youth
Minimum Wages and Employment: A Review of Evidence from the New Minimum Wage Research
Full text linkWe review the burgeoning literature on the employment effects of minimum wages—in the United States and other countries—that was spurred by the “new minimum wage research†beginning in the early 1990's. The wide range of existing estimates makes it difficult for us to draw broad generalizations about the implications of the new minimum wage research. Clearly, no consensus now exists about the overall effects on low-wage employment of an increase in the minimum wage. However, the oft-stated assertion that this recent research fails to support the traditional view that the minimum wage reduces the employment of low-wage workers is clearly incorrect. The overwhelming majority of the studies surveyed in this paper give a relatively consistent (although not always statistically significant) indication of negative employment effects of minimum wages. In addition, among the papers we view as providing the most credible evidence, almost all point to negative employment effects. Moreover, the evidence tends to point to disemployment effects of minimum wages in the United States as well as many other countries. Two potentially more important conclusions emerge from our review. First, we see very few—if any—cases where a study provides convincing evidence of positive employment effects of minimum wages, especially from studies that focus on broader groups (rather than a narrow industry) for which the competitive model predicts disemployment effects. Second, when researchers focus on the least-skilled groups most likely to be adversely affected by minimum wages, we regard the evidence as relatively overwhelming that there are stronger disemployment effects for these groups.Minimum wage; Employment
Changes in Job Stability and Job Security: A Collective Effort to Untangle, Reconcile, and Interpret the Evidence
Full text linkI synthesize and summarize a set of recent papers on changes in the employment relationship. The authors of these papers present the most up-to-date and accurate assessment of their evidence on changes in job stability and job security, and attempt to reconcile their evidence with the findings of other research, including the other papers discussed herein. Some of papers also begin to explore explanations of changes in the employment relationship. The evidence suggests that the 1990's witnessed some changes in the employment relationship consistent with weakened bonds between workers and firms. But the magnitudes of these changes indicate that while these bonds may have weakened, they have not been broken. Furthermore, the changes that occurred in the 1990's have not persisted very long. It is therefore premature to infer long-term trends towards declines in long-term employment relationships, and even more so to infer anything like the disappearance of long-term, secure jobs. The papers examining sources of changes in job stability and job security in the 1990's point to some potential explanations, including relative wage movements, growth in alternative employment relationships, and downsizing. However, with the possible exception of the first of these, this list does not encompass fundamental' or exogenous changes impacting the employment relationship, but rather to some extent suggests how various changes in the employment relationship may reinforce each other. Understanding the structural changes underlying empirical observations on changes in job stability and job security is likely to be a fruitful frontier for future research on the employment relationship.
Minimum Wages and Employment: A Review of Evidence from the New Minimum Wage Research
Full text linkWe review the burgeoning literature on the employment effects of minimum wages - in the United States and other countries - that was spurred by the new minimum wage research beginning in the early 1990s. Our review indicates that there is a wide range of existing estimates and, accordingly, a lack of consensus about the overall effects on low-wage employment of an increase in the minimum wage. However, the oft-stated assertion that recent research fails to support the traditional view that the minimum wage reduces the employment of low-wage workers is clearly incorrect. A sizable majority of the studies surveyed in this monograph give a relatively consistent (although not always statistically significant) indication of negative employment effects of minimum wages. In addition, among the papers we view as providing the most credible evidence, almost all point to negative employment effects, both for the United States as well as for many other countries. Two other important conclusions emerge from our review. First, we see very few - if any - studies that provide convincing evidence of positive employment effects of minimum wages, especially from those studies that focus on the broader groups (rather than a narrow industry) for which the competitive model predicts disemployment effects. Second, the studies that focus on the least-skilled groups provide relatively overwhelming evidence of stronger disemployment effects for these groups.
Do Stronger Age Discrimination Laws Make Social Security Reforms More Effective?
Full text linkSupply-side Social Security reforms intended to increase employment and delay benefit claiming among older individuals may be frustrated by age discrimination. We test for policy complementarities between these reforms and demand-side efforts to deter age discrimination, specifically studying whether stronger state-level age discrimination protections enhanced the impact of the 1983 Social Security reforms that increased the Full Retirement Age (FRA) and reduced benefits. The evidence indicates that, for older individuals for whom early retirement benefits fell and the FRA increased, stronger state age discrimination protections were associated with delayed benefit claiming and increases in employment, with benefit claiming pushed from 65 to the new FRA, and increased employment after age 62 and age 65 that is then curtailed at the new FRA.
Production Function and Wage Equation Estimation with Heterogeneous Labor: Evidence from a New Matched Employer-Employee Data Set
Full text linkIn this paper, we first describe the 1990 DEED, the most recently constructed matched employer-employee data set for the United States that contains detailed demographic information on workers (most notably, information on education). We then use the data from manufacturing establishments in the 1990 DEED to update and expand on previous findings, using a more limited data set, regarding the measurement of the labor input and theories of wage determination. We find that the productivity of women is less than that of men, but not by enough to fully explain the gap in wages, a result that is consistent with wage discrimination against women. In contrast, we find no evidence of wage discrimination against blacks. We estimate that both the wage and productivity profiles are rising but concave to the origin (consistent with profiles quadratic in age), but the estimated relative wage profile is steeper than the relative productivity profile, consistent with models of deferred wages. We find a productivity premium for marriage equal to that of the wage premium, and a productivity premium for education that somewhat exceeds the wage premium. Exploring the sensitivity of these results, we also find that different specifications of production functions do not have any qualitative effects on the these results. Finally, the results indicate that the returns to productive inputs (capital, materials, labor quality) as well as the residual variance are virtually unaffected by the choice of the construction of the labor quality input.
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