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Transformations of the employment structure in the EU and the US, 1995–2007

Authors:
Enrique Fernandez Macias at European Commission Joint Research Centre, Seville
Enrique Fernandez Macias
  • European Commission Joint Research Centre, Seville
John Hurley
John Hurley
John Hurley
  • This person is not on ResearchGate, or hasn't claimed this research yet.
Donald Storrie
Donald Storrie
Donald Storrie
  • This person is not on ResearchGate, or hasn't claimed this research yet.
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Abstract

To what extent did European countries create 'more and better jobs' – as the EU's Lisbon agenda targeted - after 1995? And to what extent did employment growth in Europe between 1995-2007 reflect the pattern of growing good and bad jobs and a 'disappearing middle' identified in the US labour market? Addressing these questions, this collection describes the changing structure of jobs during the period of robust employment expansion that preceded the 2008 financial crisis. It also provides analysis of labour market developments in these developed economies in terms of gender, international mobility and debates over the quality of work. All of the contributions in this collection originate from a common jobs-based, structural approach to labour market analysis using the same comprehensive dataset.
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From:
Fernandez-Macias, E., Hurley, J., & Storrie, D. (2012):
Transformation of the Employment Structure in the EU and
USA, 1995-2007. Palgrave Macmillan.
... In the original Jobs project (Eurofound, 2008;Fernández-Macías et al, 2012), two fixed rankings were used for analysing structural change in employment in 23 European countries between 1995 and 2007. One of those rankings was based on the average educational level of workers within each job, drawing from EU-LFS data. ...
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... In fact what has been found to be happening is the polarization of labour markets into good and bad jobs: good ones provide long hours and high pay whereas bad jobs might entail too few hours and low pay. Consequently, these jobs also offer diverging possibilities for balanced lives (Fernández-Macías et al. 2012;Jacobs and Gerson 2004;Kalleberg 2011;Warren 2004Warren , 2015). ...
The Intensification of Work
Chapter
  • Mar 2018
Work intensity has become an increasingly vital concept in understanding current changes in the employment sector, and why these changes have detrimental implications for the well-being of employees and their families. Objective measures, such as allocation or length of work hours, do not necessarily catch the tempo of work during the time spent at work. Nor are the hours an appropriate indicator of the level of mental effort and strain in and even outside of (official) work (hours). This chapter discusses the various change processes in the economy and work life that have led to the intensification of work. The chapter’s aim is also to describe how these change processes pose varying challenges for women and men in different socio-economic positions.
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... In order to evaluate the nature and implications of the flows, and to facilitate the link with previous research on structural labour market developments, workers are classified in occupations and grouped in five categories (quintiles) according to the average occupational wages. This approach is very similar, though not identical to (because of limitations imposed by the data), the 'jobs-based approach' used in the European Jobs Monitor (Eurofound, 2013) and other recent literature on occupational change (see, for instance, Wright and Dwyer, 2003;Fernández-Macías et al, 2012;Oesch, 2013). ...
Employment transitions and occupational mobility in Europe: The impact of the Great Recession
Book
Full-text available
  • Jul 2017
This study investigates employment and occupational mobility in Europe before and after the 2008 financial crisis, with the aim of linking individual-level employment transitions to the broad labour market developments during the crisis, such as the surge in unemployment and the phenomenon of job polarisation. The analysis compares six European countries that represent different institutional clusters – France, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the UK. It tracks the transitions of their working age populations into and out of inactivity, unemployment and employment (in five wage categories). The study seeks to better understand what happened to workers who lost their jobs during the recession, beyond the headline unemployment statistics. Did they find other work and, if so, was it better or worse paid? Were opportunities for upward occupational mobility affected by the crisis? The findings show that the countries studied fall into three distinct categories based on the degree of occupational mobility characterising their economies.
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... Then this type of growth is replaced by innovative growth associated with the search for new technologies, while the quality of such development significantly changes. Thirdly, within the framework of a long-term forecast, there is always a contradiction in the labor force ( Fernandez-Macias et al., 2012;Zhang, 2011;Carmona, 2002). The resident population of the city, subject to objective demographic trends, cannot constantly provide the supply of labor sufficient to ensure the growth of the city economy. ...
A methodological approach to forecasting spatial distribution of workplaces in an industrial metropolis
Article
Full-text available
  • Dec 2017
Many world cities retain their unique industrial status. Such a feature of the economy of an industrial metropolis imposes additional requirements on the development of the forecast of spatial distribution of workplaces. The article highlights the contradictions of the long-term development of an industrial megalopolis, which become scenic forks, when forecasted. These include optimization of the industrial and trade-service sectors of the economy, the ratio of inertial and innovative development vectors, variability of migration flows and the choice of the agglomeration model type. The article is devoted to the problem of forecasting the development of a large metropolis, where the industrial sector plays a significant role in the economy. At the methodological level, the article justifies principles of spatial development of an industrial metropolis. The article describes forecasting tools for spatial location of workplaces, based on a combination of several models. The study was performed through the example of Ekaterinburg - the industrial capital of Russia; the metropolis scenarios were justified until 2035; the forecast of spatial distribution was calculated through the example of the two sectors competing for investments - industrial and trade-service. The authors substantiate spatial distribution of workplaces taking into account the projected number of people employed, the number of population of working age and distinguishing features of transport behavior of citizens. The paper demonstrates that the number of large industrial enterprises in a historically industrial center and its first zone decreases, and the modern industry in the form of small and medium-sized businesses located in industrial parks commence gradually forming a circuit with nodes on transport routes towards the largest consumer territories. © Victoria V. Akberdina, Oksana V Tretyakova, Andrey I. Vlasov, 2017.
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... This view is consistent with studies that explain rising inequality in terms of the shifts in the skill composition of production (Autor, Katz, and Kearney, 2006). Comparative work using industry-occupation, rather than firm, data supports the hypothesis that the polarization of the skill distribution is associated with rising within industry inequality in Germany (Fernandez-Macias, Hurley and Stone, 2012). What is unclear in this research is whether this skill polarization happened within or between workplaces. ...
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Introducción. Trabajo, empleo y sociedad: ¿Qué esperar del futuro?
Article
Full-text available
  • Dec 2019
Resumen En la presente introducción se destacan los principales aspectos extraídos de los artículos de este número especial que cabría considerar en las investigaciones sobre el futuro del trabajo. Se presentan los cambios acelerados que afectan al mundo del trabajo como una oportunidad de orientarse hacia un crecimiento proclive a la igualdad, pero también se advierte de los peligros que plantea una mala gestión del cambio tecnológico, de las desigualdades –haciendo hincapié en el carácter persistente y transversal de la desigualdad de género–, de las cadenas mundiales de suministro y de las oportunidades de diálogo social. En vista de ello, se proponen también recomendaciones de política en las que se presta especial atención al fortalecimiento de la protección de los trabajadores y de las instituciones representativas, el replanteamiento de los marcos normativos y de los sistemas fiscales, y el logro de transiciones justas.
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Job quality for Americans with disabilities
Article
  • Jan 2019
  • J Vocat Rehabil
BACKGROUND: In previous research across a variety of disciplines, job quality is a concept used to assess inequality in employment. Little attention has been paid to examining job quality for workers with disabilities. OBJECTIVE: This article seeks to expand upon existing measures of employment outcomes for people with disabilities by examining the likelihood of having a good quality job compared to workers with no disability. METHODS: Using the 2014–2016 Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (CPS-ASEC), we estimate the prevalence of good quality jobs for workers with and without disabilities, by full- or part-time employment status. A job of good quality is defined as one that pays more than median wages and offers employer-sponsored health insurance and a retirement savings program. RESULTS: Using logistic regression to estimate the odds of having a good job, we find that disability is not predictive of having a good job after controlling for sociodemographic characteristics and health status. Health status among workers, however, is associated with having a good quality job. CONCLUSIONS: Job quality indicators are useful components in tracking employment participation for workers with disabilities. Alternate measures using subjective assessments of job quality should be explored.
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Desindustrialización y crisis en la Barcelona posolímpica: ¿Hacia una ciudad dual?
Article
Full-text available
  • Jan 2018
  • EURE
The transition from industrial to post-industrial society has been accompanied by a set of economic and demographic changes that have triggered significant effects on the social structure of developed countries. The increase in social inequality is one of these effects, especially in urban areas, where socio-residential structure has been affected too. This article analyzes the evolution of social inequality and socio-residential structure in the metropolitan area of Barcelona during the last two decades. The hypothesis is that Barcelona, like others European cities, has not tended in recent years towards a dual city scheme -characterized by the polarization of the social and urban structure-, which fits better with the American cities. The results confirm this hypothesis and place the Catalan capital city as unequal but not too segregated.
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The Challenge of Austerity for Gender Equality in Europe: A Consideration of Eight Countries at the Center of the Crisis
Chapter
  • Jun 2017
This chapter, published in 2015 and reprinted here, explores the comparative experience of women and men in eight European countries most affected by either the financial or the austerity crises and the challenges posed by the crisis for gender equality. It draws, for its theoretical framework and empirical evidence, on Karamessini and Rubery (2013). The immediate gender effects of both recession and austerity are primarily explained by prevailing patterns of gender segregation interacting with the scale of demand changes. There are longer term consequences as well which vary between men and women and by social class.
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Employment polarization and over-education in Germany, Spain, Sweden and UK
Article
Full-text available
  • Aug 2017
  • Empirica
The objective of this study is twofold. First, it investigates the association between technological change and over-education by analysing incidence of over-education and its change across skill-based and task-based job categories. Second, it compares countries with different employment change pattern—mainly upgrading and polarizing—to establish a link between employment polarization and over-education. Using data from European Labour Force Survey covering the period from 1999 to 2007, the paper analyses four countries of Europe—Germany, Spain, Sweden and UK. The results suggest higher incidence of over-education in polarized countries—Spain and UK as compared to countries with a somewhat upgrading pattern of employment change—Germany and Sweden. It also reveals that in Spain and UK, over-education is prominent and increasing over time in the low-skill jobs which are mostly non-routine manual in nature, while Germany and Sweden have more over-educated workers in middle skilled routine and high skilled analytical jobs. I find similar results in both descriptive and job fixed effects regressions.
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