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Abstract.This article investigates the wage effects of employment in care work – conceptualized as work providing face‐to‐face client services that strengthen the health, skills or safety of recipients – in 12 countries representing a range of economic and policy contexts. While previous research has found an earnings penalty for care work, this article finds remarkable cross‐national variation in that effect. The authors find that worker characteristics and job characteristics shape the effect of care employment on earnings. They also consider how country‐level factors – earnings inequality, size of public sector, and trade union strength – impact upon cross‐national variation in the effect of care employment on earnings.

Explores the relationship between urban poverty and urban employment in the informal sector in particular, and the impact of poverty and unemployment on various groups such as women, youth and children. Discusses the elements of a local framework in which employment promotion and social inclusion are integral parts of urban governance and shows how the ILO can contribute to setting and implementing an urban agenda where employment in central

In this article a moral economy approach is proposed that is informed by Karl Polanyi and E. P. Thompson, who capture the ubiquitous tension between a stable, moral and human society and the economic practices of self-regulating markets, and by Andrew Sayer's consideration of lay morality. Moral economy is an analytical framework that gives voice to critical concerns for the workings of an increasingly disconnected capitalism, its inherent tendencies to treat labour as a 'fictitious commodity' and the impact this has on the well-being of individuals and wider society. Hence, at the heart of the approach suggested here is a normative understanding of mutual reciprocality and embedded sociality that raises questions about how to support the human capacity to flourish.

At the conference to celebrate 25 years of publishing Work, Employment and Society, held at the British Library in 2012, I had the privilege of being asked to talk about feminist approaches to the changing nature of work and employment. Despite being something of an interloper – I am a geographer, not a sociologist – as a committed reader of the journal I was delighted to be invited. I was even more delighted when the organizers suggested that I turn my remarks into this comment.

This report investigates the effect of employment in a job involving care work - conceptualized as work in occupations where workers provide face-to-face services that strengthen the physical health and safety or the physical, cognitive, or emotional skills of those they serve - on the relative earnings of both men and women workers in twelve countries that represent a range of economic and political policy contexts. In addition, this report descriptively explores the characteristics of workers engaged in care employment and how these vary cross-nationally. We examine how much of the effects of care work employment on wages can be attributed to differences in worker characteristics such as educational attainment, age, gender, and nativity. Importantly, where possible, we disaggregate our category of care workers into smaller occupational groups, namely physicians, nurses, primary/secondary teachers, university professors, and domestic workers versus all other care workers to examine whether the effect of care work employment on earnings varies by the type of care work performed. We also discuss three major explanations for the potential differential pay of care workers: cultural devaluations of care work due to its association with 'women's work,' economic tensions due to the expense of high quality care provision, and political factors shaping labor market and social inequalities regarding care work. We consider how national context and social policies - including the degree of country-level earnings inequality, size of public sector, immigration, and labor union density - shape variation in the relative net effects of care work on earnings.

AbstractIn the context of the Global Collaboratory on the History of Labour Relations, in this article, we relate the analysis of precarious work in Portugal to the state, in particular, as a direct participant functioning as both employer and mediator. In the second part, we present a short overview of the evolution of casualization in the context of employment and unemployment in contemporary Portugal (1974–2014). In the third section, we discuss state policies on labour relations, particularly in the context of the welfare state. Finally, we compare this present analysis with Swedish research done from the perspective of the state as a direct participant and mediator over the past four decades.

The unprecedented progress of East Asia Pacific is a triumph of working people. Countries that were low-income a generation ago successfully integrated into the global value chain, exploiting their labor-cost advantage. In 1990, the region held about one-third of the world's labor force. Leveraging this comparative advantage, the share of global GDP of emerging economies in East Asia Pacific grew from 7 percent in 1992 to 17 percent in 2011. Yet the region now fi nds itself at a critical juncture. Work and its contribution to growth and well-being can no longer be taken for granted. Labor's share of national income has been declining across most of the region. The challenges range from high youth inactivity and rising inequality to binding skills shortages and lagging infrastructure. A key underlying issue is pervasive and persistent economic informality, despite rapid urbanization, which constrains innovation and productivity, limits the tax base, and increases household vulnerability to shocks. Informality is a consequence of both strict labor regulations and limited enforcement capacity. In several countries, de jure employment regulations are more stringent than in many parts of southern Europe. Even labor regulations set at reasonable levels but poorly implemented can exacerbate the market failures they were designed to overcome. Aggravating these failures further are underinvestment in transportation infrastructure and poor urban planning, limited access to finance for investment and growth, and the failure of the skills-supply system to keep up with the changing demands of modern market economies. East Asia Pacific At Work argues that governments in the region will have to actively help markets sustain the well-being that people can expect from work. The appropriate policy responses to these challenges are to ensure macroeconomic stability and a regulatory framework that encourages the vitality and growth of, in particular, small- and medium-size enterprises, where most people in the region work. The countries that are still mostly agrarian will need to focus more on raising agricultural productivity, a vital but often overlooked step in the process of structural transformation. In urbanizing countries, effective urban planning becomes critical, and better management and functioning of land markets, transportation infrastructure, and delivery of services will loosen constraints on the demand for labor and human capital. The most important in ...