Suchergebnisse

We analyse the moderating effect of trade unions on industrial employment and unemployment in countries facing exposure to industrial robots. Applying random effects within-between regression to a pseudo-panel of observations from 28 advanced democracies over 1998-2019, we find that stronger trade unions in a country are associated with a greater decline in the industry sector employment of young and low-educated workers. We also show that the unemployment rates for low-educated workers remain constant in strongly unionised countries with increasing exposure to robots, whereas in weakly unionised countries, low-educated unemployment declines with robot exposure but from a higher starting point. Our results point to unions exacerbating the insider-outsider effects of technological change within the industrial sector, which however is not fully passed on to unemployment.

AbstractThis article documents and discusses the importance of the intra‐EU posting of third‐country national (TCN) labour migrants. TCN labour migrants have traditionally been fixed to one Member State where they reside and work based on a work and residence permit. Case‐law of the European Court of Justice allowed TCNs to be posted across the EU based on the free movement of services. We reveal that an increasing number of TCNs from a large variety of citizenships are indeed mobile across the EU as posted workers. We additionally show that most of these workers are low‐ and medium‐skilled and would – in a traditional labour migration setting – have difficulty obtaining a work and residence permit from Member States that privilege highly skilled labour migration. We also demonstrate that the posting of TCNs has the potential to grow into a mobility channel on equal footing with "traditional" TCN labour migration.

Abstract
This paper examines the labor market trajectories of refugees who arrived in Belgium between 1999 and 2009. Belgium offers a relatively easy formal labor market access to refugees and other types of migrants but they face many other barriers in this strongly regulated and institutionalized labor market. Based on a longitudinal dataset that links respondents' information from the Belgian Labor Force Survey with comprehensive social security data on their work histories, we estimate discrete-time hazard models to analyze refugees' entry into and exit out of the first employment spell, contrasting their outcomes with family and labor migrants of the same arrival cohort. The analysis shows that refugees take significantly longer to enter their first employment spell as compared with other migrant groups. They also run a greater risk of exiting out of their first employment spell (back) into social assistance and into unemployment. The low employment rates of refugees are thus not only due to a slow integration process upon arrival, but also reflect a disproportional risk of exiting the labor market after a period in work. Our findings indicate that helping refugees into a first job is not sufficient to ensure labor market participation in the long run, because these jobs may be short-lived. Instead, our results provide clear arguments in favor of policies that support sustainable labor market integration.

Despite being one of the most prolific spenders on active labour market policies, and investing heavily in civic integration programmes, family policies and career and diversity plans, the native-migrant employment gap in Belgium is still one of the largest among EU and OECD countries. Past research has shown that even after controlling for human capital and other socio-demographic factors a large unexplained gap (often called ethnic gap or penalty) remains. This paper investigates how the motive for migrating to Belgium contributes to the native-migrant employment gap. Based on data from the 2014 Belgian LFS Ad Hoc Module on the labour market situation of migrants and their immediate descendants, we compare the employment outcomes of labour migrants (with and without a job prior to migration), family reunion migrants, student migrants and refugees with those of the native-born. In line with previous studies, we establish that refugees and family reunion migrants' employment likelihood is lower when compared to labour migrants and natives. Refugees who do work tend to do so in temporary jobs and in jobs that are below their skill levels. However, temporary employment is also prevalent among labour migrants without a job prior to migration and over qualification is a specific challenge for male student migrants.

This paper asks what governments in the EU Member States and some US states are doing to support workers on low wages. Using model family simulations, we assess the policy measures currently in place to guarantee an adequate disposable income to working families, taking into account minimum wages, social security contributions, taxes and cash benefits. We show that despite increased efforts over the past decade, disposable incomes of certain types of minimum wage workers still fall well below the EU at-risk-of-poverty thresholds in many countries. Single earners with dependent children are especially at risk of poverty. We discuss the options for making progress.

Intra‐EU mobility has been the subject of debate from its very inception. Some scholars argue that intra‐EU labour migration improves the allocation of human capital in the EU and contend that the level of permanent‐type labour mobility is still too low to talk of a single European labour market. Others point to the social downside of both free labour mobility and free service mobility, such as the increased precariousness of industrial relations, and problems of wage dumping. Since the downsides are acute and demand attention, less attention has been given to the origins, destinations and nature of the posting flows more generally. One of the reasons for this is the fact that data on posting are still scarce. This article aims to fill this gap by exploring unique posting data for Belgium. Based on these data we argue that while the free movement of labour and a single European labour market has been a policy goal for decades, it is the free movement of services that is well on its way to shape a hybrid single European labour market. Permanent type mobility is greatly complemented with high levels of short term service mobility. Service mobility/posting is as much a phenomenon of intra‐EU15 mobility, than it is of EU12 mobility. Moreover, posting is set to remain more popular than classical free movement of labour among EU12 citizens. Service workers circumvent the most important linguistic, cultural, institutional and social hurdles that classical mobile workers face in a diverse EU. The free movement of services is developing to such an extent that it complements permanent type free labour mobility in shaping a single but typically European labour market that is driven by diversity and circular mobility.

This paper focuses on the role of minimum wages, tax and benefit policies in protecting workers against financial poverty, covering 21 European countries with a national minimum wage and three US States (New Jersey, Nebraska and Texas). It is shown that only for single persons and only in a number of countries, net income packages at minimum wage level reach or exceed the EU's at-risk-of poverty threshold, set at 60 per cent of median equivalent household income in each country. For lone parents and sole breadwinners with a partner and children to support, net income packages at minimum wage are below this threshold almost everywhere, usually by a wide margin. This is the case despite shifts over the past decade towards tax relief and additional income support provisions for low-paid workers. We argue that there appear to be limits to what minimum wage policies alone can achieve in the fight against in-work poverty. The route of raising minimum wages to eliminate poverty among workers solely reliant on it seems to be inherently constrained, especially in countries where the distance between minimum and average wage levels is already comparatively small and where relative poverty thresholds are mostly a function of the dual-earner living standards. In order to fight in-work poverty new policy routes need to be explored. The paper offers a brief discussion of possible alternatives and cautions against 'one size fits all' policy solutions.

At the European level and in most EU member states, higher employment levels are seen as key to better poverty outcomes. What can we expect the actual impact to be, however? Up until now shift-share analysis has been used to estimate the impact of rising employment on relative income poverty. This method has serious limitations. We propose a more sophisticated simulation model that builds on regression-based estimates of employment probabilities and wages. We use this model to estimate the impact on relative income poverty of moving towards the Europe 2020 target of 75 percent of the working-age population in work. Two sensitivity checks are included: giving priority in job allocation to jobless households and imputing low instead of estimated wages. This article shows that employment growth does not necessarily result in lower relative poverty shares, a result that is largely consistent with observed outcomes over the past decade.

This article looks at the impact of citizenship acquisition on the labour market position of immigrants in Belgium. Citizenship is open to all immigrants with a sufficient period of legal residence, without any language or integration requirements. In that respect, this study is an important complement to existing studies which have mostly focused on countries with strict acquisition rules. Based on Labour Force Survey data for 2008, this study uses probit regression to estimate the static and dynamic employment probabilities and unemployment risks. We find that citizenship acquisition is associated with better labour market outcomes for non-Western immigrants in general. This effect remains after controlling for years of residence since migration, indicating the existence of a citizenship premium in Belgium.

At the European level and in most EU member states, higher employment levels are seen as key to better poverty outcomes. But what can we expect the actual impact to be? Up until now shift-share analysis has been used to estimate the impact of rising employment on relative income poverty. This method has serious limitations. We propose a more sophisticated simulation model that builds on regression based estimates of employment probabilities and wages. We use this model to estimate the impact on relative income poverty of moving towards the Europe 2020 target of 75 percent of the working aged population in work. Two sensitivity checks are included: giving priority in job allocation to jobless households and imputing low instead of estimated wages. This paper shows that employment growth does not necessarily result in lower relative poverty shares, a result that is largely consistent with observed outcomes over the past decade.