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We analyse the content of Italian occupations operating in about 600 sectors with a focus on the dimensions that expose workers to contagion risks during the COVID-19 epidemics. To do so we leverage extremely detailed and granular information from ICP, the Italian equivalent of O*Net. We find that several sectors need physical proximity to operate: the workers employed in Italy in sectors whose physical proximity index is above the national average are more than 6.5 million (most of them in retail trade). Groups at risk of contagion and complications from COVID-19 (mainly male above the age of 50) work in sectors that are little exposed to physical proximity, currently under lockdown or can work remotely. The sectoral lockdowns put in place by the Italian Government in March 2020 seem to have targeted sectors who operate in physical proximity, but not those directly exposed to infections (the health industry is not subject to lockdown). Most workers who can operate from home have not been put under lockdown and are currently working. Therefore, the number of workers who are not in workplaces could be up to 3 million higher than those whose sector has been shutdown. ; This version: April 12, 2020

The recent global COVID-19 pandemic forced most of governments in developed countries to introduce severe measures limiting people mobility freedom in order to contain the infection spread. Consequently, working from home (WFH) procedures became of great importance for a large part of employees, since they represent the only option to both continue working and keep staying home. Based on influence function regression methods, our paper explores the role of WFH attitude across labour income distribution in Italy. Results show that increasing WFH attitudes of occupations would lead to a rise of wage inequality among Italian employees. Specifically, a change from low to high WFH attitude would determine a 10% wage premium on average and even higher premiums (+17%) in top deciles of wage distribution. A possible improvement of occupations WFH attitude tends to benefit male, older and high-paid employees, as well as those living in provinces more affected by the novel coronavirus.

In this paper, we assess the impact of immigration and unemployment for a sample of 15 EU countries between 1997 and 2016. We test for the existence of a core-periphery dualism based on differences in macroeconomic fundamentals and labour market characteristics. We use a Panel Error Correction Model to assess the direction and persistence of the impact of immigration on domestic unemployment in the short and in the long run. In the long run, immigration is found to reduce unemployment in all peripheral-countries. In core countries, we find no long-run impact of immigration on unemployment due to substantial heterogeneity. As for short-run dynamics, we find a confirmation of the result that immigration reduces unemployment for the whole sample. Based on differences in employment protection and activity rates, larger impacts are found for Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon countries, while lower and less significant impacts are found for Italy, Greece and Portugal.

We define the wage incentive to management as the wage premium the manager earns because of his/her supervising role. We adopt an approach based on what if questions and estimate the premium at different quantiles of the distribution of wages for 26 European economies. To ease comparisons we make use of the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions inquiry released in 2009. The premium is found to be higher at the right tail of the distribution of wages, suggesting that the incentive to management differs across individuals at different quantiles of the distribution within each economy. Results also suggest that the premium differs across individuals located at the same quantiles of the distribution of different economies.

The COVID pandemic that took the world economy by surprise at the beginning of 2020 brought many drastic changes to the way individuals carry on their daily lives. One that will have long lasting effects, even after the spread of the virus is contained, is a shift towards flexible work arrangements, including remote work options. Initially implemented to comply with government imposed stay-at-home orders, many employers decided to allow remote work even after the orders were lifted. In this chapter we will review some of the metrics used in the literature to measure the potential that a specific occupation is suitable for telework. This is important because Working From Home was often the only option for businesses to remain open during the first part of the pandemic. We also review the results of the literature on two important dimensions of inequality: the gender wage gap and income inequality, Moreover, we review some evidence of the effect of WFH on worker's productivity in general and during the pandemic and on physical and mental health. We conclude with a description of what WFH may look like after the pandemic, by describing the process towards a possible "new normal" in the labour market.

PurposeThis work analyses how the adoption of technological innovations correlates with workers' perceived levels of job insecurity, and what factors moderate such relationship.Design/methodology/approachThe study makes use of the 2018 wave of the Participation, Labour, Unemployment Survey (PLUS) from Inapp. The richness of the survey and the representativeness of the underlying sample (including 13,837 employed workers) allow employing various empirical specifications where it is possible to control and moderate for many socio-demographic features of the worker, including her occupation and industry of employment, thereby accounting for various potential confounding factors.FindingsThe results of this ordered logit estimations show that workers' perception of job insecurity is affected by many subjective, firm-related and even macroeconomic factors. This study demonstrates that the adoption of technological innovations by companies is associated with lower levels of job insecurity perceived by their workers. In fact, the adoption of technological innovations by a company is perceived by surviving workers (those who remain in the same firm even after the introduction of such innovations) as a signal of the firm's health and its commitment to preserving the activity. Individual- and occupation-specific moderating factors play a limited role.Originality/valueThis study estimates how perceived job insecurity relates to the technological innovations adopted by the firms in which the interviewees are employed rather than analyzing their general concerns about job insecurity. In addition, this study identifies different types of innovations, such as product and process innovation, automation and other types of innovations.