Download or read book Do Temporary Help Jobs Improve Labor Market Outcomes for Low skilled Workers written by David H. Autor and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A disproportionate share of low-skilled U.S. workers is employed by temporary help firms. These firms offer rapid entry into paid employment, but temporary help jobs are typically brief and it is unknown whether they foster longer-term employment. We draw upon an unusual, large-scale policy experiment in the state of Michigan to evaluate whether holding temporary help jobs facilitates labor market advancement for low-skilled workers. To identify these effects, we exploit the random assignment of welfare-to-work clients across numerous welfare service providers in a major metropolitan area. These providers feature substantially different placement rates at temporary help jobs but offer otherwise similar services. We find that moving welfare participants into temporary help jobs boosts their short-term earnings. But these gains are offset by lower earnings, less frequent employment, and potentially higher welfare recidivism over the next one to two years. In contrast, placements in direct-hire jobs raise participants' earnings substantially and reduce recidivism both one and two years following placement. We conclude that encouraging low-skilled workers to take temporary help agency jobs is no more effective - and possibly less effective - than providing no job placements at all. Keywords: Temporary Help Employment, Contingent Work, Welfare, Work First, Earnings, Employment. JEL Classifications: I38, J20, J30, J40.
Download or read book The Working Life written by Nan L. Maxwell and published by W.E. Upjohn Institute. This book was released on 2006 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Uses recent data from the San Francisco's Bay Area Longitudinal Survey (BALS) to evaluate characteristics of recruiting and screening methods, skill requirements in entry-level jobs, and promotional opportunities concerning jobs available to workers with little formal education or work experience. Finds that low-skilled jobs do require skills in English, mathematics, problem-solving and communication, often relatively high physical and mechanical abilities, and that firms carry increased wages and offer promotional opportunities. Provides details about the skill assessment and job duties.
Download or read book Studies of Labor Market Intermediation written by David H. Autor and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-12-15 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the traditional craft hiring hall to the Web site Monster.com, a multitude of institutions exist to facilitate the matching of workers with firms. The diversity of such Labor Market Intermediaries (LMIs) encompasses criminal records providers, public employment offices, labor unions, temporary help agencies, and centralized medical residency matches. Studies of Labor Market Intermediation analyzes how these third-party actors intercede where workers and firms meet, thereby aiding, impeding, and, in some cases, exploiting the matching process. By building a conceptual foundation for analyzing the roles that these understudied economic actors serve in the labor market, this volume develops both a qualitative and quantitative sense of their significance to market operation and worker welfare. Cross-national in scope, Studies of Labor Market Intermediation is distinctive in coalescing research on a set of market institutions that are typically treated as isolated entities, thus setting a research agenda for analyzing the changing shape of employment in an era of rapid globalization and technological change.
Download or read book Building America s Skilled Technical Workforce written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2017-06-04 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Skilled technical occupationsâ€"defined as occupations that require a high level of knowledge in a technical domain but do not require a bachelor's degree for entryâ€"are a key component of the U.S. economy. In response to globalization and advances in science and technology, American firms are demanding workers with greater proficiency in literacy and numeracy, as well as strong interpersonal, technical, and problem-solving skills. However, employer surveys and industry and government reports have raised concerns that the nation may not have an adequate supply of skilled technical workers to achieve its competitiveness and economic growth objectives. In response to the broader need for policy information and advice, Building America's Skilled Technical Workforce examines the coverage, effectiveness, flexibility, and coordination of the policies and various programs that prepare Americans for skilled technical jobs. This report provides action-oriented recommendations for improving the American system of technical education, training, and certification.
Download or read book Studies of Labor Market Intermediation written by David H. Autor and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-12-01 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the traditional craft hiring hall to the Web site Monster.com, a multitude of institutions exist to facilitate the matching of workers with firms. The diversity of such Labor Market Intermediaries (LMIs) encompasses criminal records providers, public employment offices, labor unions, temporary help agencies, and centralized medical residency matches. Studies of Labor Market Intermediation analyzes how these third-party actors intercede where workers and firms meet, thereby aiding, impeding, and, in some cases, exploiting the matching process. By building a conceptual foundation for analyzing the roles that these understudied economic actors serve in the labor market, this volume develops both a qualitative and quantitative sense of their significance to market operation and worker welfare. Cross-national in scope, Studies of Labor Market Intermediation is distinctive in coalescing research on a set of market institutions that are typically treated as isolated entities, thus setting a research agenda for analyzing the changing shape of employment in an era of rapid globalization and technological change.
Download or read book Low Wage America written by Eileen Appelbaum and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2003-09-04 with total page 550 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: About 27.5 million Americans—nearly 24 percent of the labor force—earn less than $8.70 an hour, not enough to keep a family of four out of poverty, even working full-time year-round. Job ladders for these workers have been dismantled, limiting their ability to get ahead in today's labor market. Low-Wage America is the most extensive study to date of how the choices employers make in response to economic globalization, industry deregulation, and advances in information technology affect the lives of tens of millions of workers at the bottom of the wage distribution. Based on data from hundreds of establishments in twenty-five industries—including manufacturing, telecommunications, hospitality, and health care—the case studies document how firms' responses to economic restructuring often results in harsh working conditions, reduced benefits, and fewer opportunities for advancement. For instance, increased pressure for profits in newly consolidated hotel chains has led to cost-cutting strategies such as requiring maids to increase the number of rooms they clean by 50 percent. Technological changes in the organization of call centers—the ultimate "disposable workplace"—have led to monitoring of operators' work performance, and eroded job ladders. Other chapters show how the temporary staffing industry has provided paths to better work for some, but to dead end jobs for many others; how new technology has reorganized work in the back offices of banks, raising skill requirements for workers; and how increased competition from abroad has forced U.S. manufacturers to cut costs by reducing wages and speeding production. Although employers' responses to economic pressures have had a generally negative effect on frontline workers, some employers manage to resist this trend and still compete successfully. The benefits to workers of multi-employer training consortia and the continuing relevance of unions offer important clues about what public policy can do to support the job prospects of this vast, but largely overlooked segment of the American workforce. Low-Wage America challenges us to a national self-examination about the nature of low-wage work in this country and asks whether we are willing to tolerate the profound social and economic consequences entailed by these jobs. A Volume in the Russell Sage Foundation Case Studies of Job Quality in Advanced Economies
Download or read book The Role of Temporary Help Employment in Low wage Worker Advancement written by Carolyn J. Heinrich and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We examine the effects of temporary help service employment on later earnings and employment for individuals participating in three federal programs providing supportive services to those facing employment difficulties. The programs include Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, whose participants are seriously disadvantaged; a job training program with a highly heterogeneous population of participants; and employment exchange services, whose participants consist of Unemployment Insurance claimants and individuals seeking assistant in obtaining employment. We undertake our analyses for two periods: the late 1990s, a time of very strong economic growth, and shortly after 2000, a time of relative stagnation. Our results suggest that temporary help service firms may facilitate quicker access to jobs for those seeking employment assistance and impart substantial benefits as transitional employment, especially for individuals whose alternatives are severely limited. Those who do not move out of temporary help jobs, however, face substantially poorer prospects, and we observe that nonwhites are more likely than whites to remain in THS positions in the two years following program participation. Our results are robust to program and time period.
Download or read book Temporary Work Agencies and Unfree Labour written by Judy Fudge and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-08-29 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unfree labor has not disappeared from advanced capitalist economies. In this sense the debates among and between Marxist and orthodox economic historians about the incompatibility of capitalism and unfree labor are moot: the International Labour Organisation has identified forced, coerced, and unfree labor as a contemporary issue of global concern. Previously hidden forms of unfree labor have emerged in parallel with several other well-documented trends affecting labor conditions, rights, and modes of regulation. These evolving types of unfree labor include the increasing normalization of contingent work (and, by extension, the undermining of the standard contract of employment), and an increase in labor intermediation. The normative, political, and numerical rise of temporary employment agencies in many countries in the last three decades is indicative of these trends. It is in the context of this rapidly changing landscape that this book consolidates and expands on research designed to understand new institutions for work in the global era. This edited collection provides a theoretical and empirical exploration of the links between unfree labor, intermediation, and modes of regulation, with particular focus on the evolving institutional forms and political-economic contexts that have been implicated in, and shaped by, the ascendency of temp agencies. What is distinctive about this collection is this bi-focal lens: it makes a substantial theoretical contribution by linking disparate literatures on, and debates about, the co-evolution of contingent work and unfree labor, new forms of labor intermediation, and different regulatory approaches; but it further lays the foundation for this theory in a series of empirically rich and geographically diverse case studies. This integrative approach is grounded in a cross-national comparative framework, using this approach as the basis for assessing how, and to what extent, temporary agency work can be considered unfree wage labor
Download or read book The Temp Economy written by Erin Hatton and published by Temple University Press. This book was released on 2011-01-07 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: groundwork for a new corporate ethos of ruthless cost cutting and mass layoffs. --
Download or read book How Non Permanent Workers Learn and Develop written by Helen Bound and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-07-11 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How Non-Permanent Workers Learn and Develop is an empirically based exploration of the challenges and opportunities non-permanent workers face in accessing quality work, learning, developing occupational identities and striving for sustainable working lives. Based on a study of 100 non-permanent workers in Singapore, it offers a model to guide thinking about workers’ learning and development in terms of an ‘integrated practice’ of craft, entrepreneurial and personal learning-to-learn skills. The book considers how strategies for continuing education and training can better fit with the realities of non-permanent work. Through its use of case studies, the book exams the significance of non-permanent work and its rise as a global phenomenon. It considers the reality of being a non-permanent worker and reactions to learning opportunities for these individuals. The book draws these aspects together to present a conceptual frame of ‘integrated practices’, challenging educational institutions and training providers to design and deliver learning and the enacted curriculum not as separate pieces of a puzzle, but as an integrated whole. With conclusions that have wider salience for public policy responses to the rise of non-permanent work, this book will be of great interest to academics and researchers in the fields of adult education, educational policy and lifelong learning.
Download or read book Handbook of Labor Economics written by Orley Ashenfelter and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2010-12-14 with total page 1141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A guide to the continually evolving field of labour economics.
Download or read book The Good Temp written by Vicki Smith and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2010-08-20 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Temporary agencies place approximately two and a half million people in jobs each day in the United States. Every year, about twelve million people use these placement agencies to find temporary work. Many Americans, even those who desire permanent jobs, decide to enter the labor market through the portal of temporary agencies. Compared with the post-World War II era, when it was a marginal labor practice, temporary employment is today an entrenched feature of jobs and labor markets. How have temporary employment relationships become so widespread and normalized? In The Good Temp, Vicki Smith and Esther B. Neuwirth provide some novel answers to this question. Their provocative analysis is based on an insider's view of the interior dynamics of a temporary help agency in Silicon Valley. It incorporates a historical perspective on the rise of the temporary help service industry. Smith and Neuwirth document how this powerful industry not only created a new market for temporary labor but also played a fundamental role in the erosion of the permanent employment model. They analyze how agencies themselves came to manufacture and market this reinvented product-the good temp, an employee who is effective and efficient, committed, and sometimes preferable to a permanent staff member. Joining extensive participant observation data with historical analysis, The Good Temp contains some surprising findings about temporary employment today and fills a significant gap in our understanding of this important labor relationship.
Download or read book The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2017-07-13 with total page 643 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration finds that the long-term impact of immigration on the wages and employment of native-born workers overall is very small, and that any negative impacts are most likely to be found for prior immigrants or native-born high school dropouts. First-generation immigrants are more costly to governments than are the native-born, but the second generation are among the strongest fiscal and economic contributors in the U.S. This report concludes that immigration has an overall positive impact on long-run economic growth in the U.S. More than 40 million people living in the United States were born in other countries, and almost an equal number have at least one foreign-born parent. Together, the first generation (foreign-born) and second generation (children of the foreign-born) comprise almost one in four Americans. It comes as little surprise, then, that many U.S. residents view immigration as a major policy issue facing the nation. Not only does immigration affect the environment in which everyone lives, learns, and works, but it also interacts with nearly every policy area of concern, from jobs and the economy, education, and health care, to federal, state, and local government budgets. The changing patterns of immigration and the evolving consequences for American society, institutions, and the economy continue to fuel public policy debate that plays out at the national, state, and local levels. The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration assesses the impact of dynamic immigration processes on economic and fiscal outcomes for the United States, a major destination of world population movements. This report will be a fundamental resource for policy makers and law makers at the federal, state, and local levels but extends to the general public, nongovernmental organizations, the business community, educational institutions, and the research community.
Download or read book The Work of the Future written by David H. Autor and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2022-06-21 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why the United States lags behind other industrialized countries in sharing the benefits of innovation with workers and how we can remedy the problem. The United States has too many low-quality, low-wage jobs. Every country has its share, but those in the United States are especially poorly paid and often without benefits. Meanwhile, overall productivity increases steadily and new technology has transformed large parts of the economy, enhancing the skills and paychecks of higher paid knowledge workers. What’s wrong with this picture? Why have so many workers benefited so little from decades of growth? The Work of the Future shows that technology is neither the problem nor the solution. We can build better jobs if we create institutions that leverage technological innovation and also support workers though long cycles of technological transformation. Building on findings from the multiyear MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future, the book argues that we must foster institutional innovations that complement technological change. Skills programs that emphasize work-based and hybrid learning (in person and online), for example, empower workers to become and remain productive in a continuously evolving workplace. Industries fueled by new technology that augments workers can supply good jobs, and federal investment in R&D can help make these industries worker-friendly. We must act to ensure that the labor market of the future offers benefits, opportunity, and a measure of economic security to all.
Download or read book Management and Organization of Temporary Agency Work written by Bas A.S. Koene and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-02-03 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past two decades the use of flexible employment relations has increased in most developed countries. The growth of temporary agency work constitutes a significant component of this development. Organizations are now facing the challenges of managing a ‘blended workforce’, i.e. a workforce consisting of both direct hires and contractors. At a time when Europe, as well as the rest of the world, is facing enhanced global competition and a severe labor market crisis, an understanding of temporary employment practices becomes all the more acute. With the evolution of the use of agency work in the Western world over the past decade, the chapters in this volume show how a focus on the management and organization of temporary agency work can be helpful to see possibilities and pitfalls for the use of temporary employment in the wake of changed employment practices and challenges to labor market stability and welfare structures. Together, the new case studies presented in this volume provide a wide scope of analysis of the organization and management of temporary agency work, offering a much-needed contribution to the discussion of issues and priorities that guide and shape organizational practices today. Its particular uniqueness lies in the empirical richness and variety of local case studies and the way in which these are related to wider policy aims, ideological shifts, and the dynamics of organizational practice, with a particular focus on the organization and management of ‘blended workforces’.
Download or read book In It Together Why Less Inequality Benefits All written by OECD and published by OECD Publishing. This book was released on 2015-05-21 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book highlights the key areas where inequalities are created and where new policies are required, including the consequences of current consolidation policies, structural labour market changes with rising non-standard work and job polarisation, persisting gender gaps...
Download or read book Strategies for Improving Economic Mobility of Workers written by Maude Toussaint-Comeau and published by W.E. Upjohn Institute. This book was released on 2009 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The chapters in this book aim at offering a fresh review of the economic circumstances of disadvantaged segments of our Population, as well as providing a provocative but nuancedassessment of the effectiveness of various policies and practices geared to redress a number of issues affecting them. Examples of programs discussed include housing allowances that addressthe spatial mismatch between poor inner-city neighborhoods and areas with job growth, education retention programs and financial aid for older low-income students, employment andtraining programs for former welfare recipients, and labor market reentry programs for the hard-to-employ/ex-offenders in distressed communities. This diversity of programs reflects thevariety of challenges and varying issues that vulnerable populations and communities confront; it also reflects the many creative ways of approaching these problems.
