Low Wages and Lousy Jobs

2020 ◽  
pp. 106-129
Author(s):  
Daniel Halliday ◽  
John Thrasher
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Paid Work ◽  
Executive Pay ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Unskilled Workers ◽  
Recent Trends ◽  
Low Wages

This chapter addresses some principal questions about labor market justice. Some of these are old concerns about the persistence of poverty due to the forces that keep wages low among unskilled workers. This leads to worries about exploitation. It will also examine the concern, most often associated with Marx, that much paid work is of a character that is detrimental to human flourishing, or serves to “alienate” workers from their labor. The focus then moves to more recent trends, such as the rise in executive pay and other aspects of “labor market polarization.” These motivate some discussion of whether it’s unjust for a few people to earn so much more than everyone else.

scholarly journals Recent trends in the gender gap in the labor market in the Philippines

2020 ◽  
Vol 56 (1&2) ◽  
pp. 173-186
Author(s):  
Mitzie Irene Conchada ◽  
Dominique Hannah Sy ◽  
Marites Tionco ◽  
Alfredo Paloyo
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Gender Gap ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Recent Trends

scholarly journals Shrinking gender wage gaps in the Brazilian labor market: an application of the APC approach

Nova Economia ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 429-464 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samantha Haussmann ◽  
◽  
André Braz Golgher ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Hierarchical Model ◽  
Wage Gaps ◽  
Gender Gaps ◽  
Model Based ◽  
Cohort Differences ◽  
Recent Trends ◽  
Abstract Labor ◽  
Wage Equations

Abstract: Labor market literature attests that men tend to earn more than women in similar occupations in Brazil and elsewhere. However, some recent trends that have occurred in Brazil promote the narrowing of gender gaps in the labor market. This paper analyzes this issue empirically with the use of PNADs, Mincerian wage equations, and a hierarchical model based on the Age-Period-Cohort approach. We observed that gender wage gaps were shrinking and, although there might still be an unexplained advantage for men in the labor market, the evolution of women's endowments for the labor market and the decrease in labor market segregation significantly compensated for this difference. Due to these trends, after controlling for cohort differences, we observed non-significant gender wage gaps in some models.

Recent Trends in U.S. Earnings Inequality by Gender

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joyce P. Jacobsen
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Labor Market ◽  
Gender Inequality ◽  
Household Income ◽  
Earnings Inequality ◽  
Theil Index ◽  
Inequality Measures ◽  
Recent Trends ◽  
Per Capita ◽  
Women's Earnings

This paper presents an overview of recent trends in U.S. earnings inequality with a focus on gender differences. Data from the 1980, 1990, and 2000 Censuses are used. Earnings and per capita household income inequality measures have risen from 1980 to 2000, both overall and among women and men separately. Theil index decompositions illustrate that within-gender inequality is rising. Simulations that treat women “more like men” in the labor market raise women’s earnings relative to men but also have the effect of increasing within-gender inequality for women.

Gender, Growth and Trade: The Miracle Economies of the Postwar Years. By David Kucera. London: Routledge, 2001. Pp. xi, 217.

2003 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 311-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Hunt
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Response Time ◽  
Market Mechanism ◽  
Macro Level ◽  
Women's Employment ◽  
Central Theme ◽  
Postwar Germany ◽  
The Cost ◽  
High Road ◽  
Low Wages

The central theme of this book is the interplay of women's employment and the macro-economy in postwar Germany and Japan. David Kucera introduces the distinction between two possible types of flexibility in the labor market. The first occurs in the absence of interference with the market mechanism from laws or institutions. This flexibility may reduce unemployment and increase the response time to shocks, at the cost of low wages and insufficient training. In the second type of flexibility, a buffer group provides this flexibility, while core workers are protected from the vagaries of the market and receive training and high wages. Kucera argues that by using women as a buffer group to protect men, Japan is able at a macro-level to reap the benefits of both the “low-road” and “high-road” approaches. Bolstering this argument, and showing that Germany pursues instead the simpler “high-road” strategy, is the most important aim of the book.

scholarly journals Screening, Competition, and Job Design: Economic Origins of Good Jobs

2012 ◽  
Vol 102 (2) ◽  
pp. 834-864 ◽  
Author(s):  
Björn Bartling ◽  
Ernst Fehr ◽  
Klaus M Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
High Performance ◽  
Market Competition ◽  
Job Design ◽  
Work Systems ◽  
High Performance Work Systems ◽  
Work Attitude ◽  
Rent Sharing ◽  
Low Wages

High-performance work systems give workers more discretion, thereby increasing effort productivity but also shirking opportunities. We show experimentally that screening for work attitude and labor market competition are causal determinants of the viability of high-performance work systems, and we identify the complementarities between discretion, rent-sharing, and screening that render them profitable. Two fundamentally distinct job designs emerge endogenously in our experiments: “bad” jobs with low discretion, low wages, and little rent-sharing, and “good” jobs with high discretion, high wages, and substantial rent-sharing. Good jobs are profitable only if employees can be screened, and labor market competition fosters their dissemination. (JEL D12, D82, J24, J31, J41, M12, M54)

scholarly journals The Labor Market and Illegal Immigration: The Outlook for the 1980S

ILR Review ◽  
1980 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 342-354 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael L. Wachter
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Older Workers ◽  
Minority Group ◽  
Work Force ◽  
Low Fertility ◽  
Illegal Alien ◽  
Fertility Rates ◽  
Unemployment Rates ◽  
Unskilled Workers ◽  
Group Members

This paper first develops a labor supply forecast for the U.S. labor market in the 1980s, focusing on the effects of the low fertility rates of recent years, and then compares that forecast with the BLS projection of employment demand in the next decade. The author attempts to isolate those occupations and age-sex groups that are likely to have a shortfall of workers and to match the characteristics of those shortage categories with the demographic characteristics of the illegal alien work force. He predicts a relative shortage of unskilled workers in the 1980s, a major departure from past trends, and suggests that an increased flow of immigrants to meet that shortage would benefit skilled older workers and, to a lesser extent, the owners of capital. He also argues, however, that increased immigration would harm domestic unskilled workers—who are increasingly minority group members—by lowering their relative income and raising their equilibrium unemployment rates.

scholarly journals Reinterpreting the Historicity of the Nordic Model

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pauli Kettunen
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
Social Regulation ◽  
Paid Work ◽  
Social Citizenship ◽  
Strong State ◽  
Social Partners ◽  
Conflicting Interests ◽  
The Eu

In conventional images of the so-called Nordic model, the strong state is opposed to markets or civil society and co-operation is opposed to conflict. These opposites appear problematic if one takes seriously the Nordic market- and interest-centered language used for the practices of social regulation, including the stubborn use of “labor market parties” instead of the EU concept “social partners”. Applying an approach sensitive to the historical and political aspects of language and concepts, the paper argues that a particular notion of social citizenship developed in the Nordic countries, in which interests rather than rights were put into the center. Such a notion of social citizenship was associated with two intertwined ideas, important in the development of the Nordic pattern of social reform: the idea of symmetry between workers and employers and the idea of a virtuous circle between divergent interests. With these ideas democracy and citizenship were combined with paid work and conflicting interests. This combination has been questioned by the projects for competitive national (and European) communities, responding to globalized and financialized capitalism. The vigorous comparisons of “models”, and the popularity of the concept of “the Nordic model”, can be seen as an aspect of this current transformation.

scholarly journals Academic Performance, School Desertion And Emotional Paradigm In University Students

2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (7) ◽  
pp. 25
Author(s):  
Emma Rosa Cruz Sosa ◽  
Laura Gatica Barrientos ◽  
Patricia Eugenia Garcia Castro ◽  
Jesus Hernandez Garcia
Keyword(s):  
Domestic Violence ◽  
Academic Performance ◽  
University Students ◽  
Work Schedules ◽  
Paid Work ◽  
Academic Needs ◽  
Family Disintegration ◽  
Family Tradition ◽  
The University ◽  
Low Wages

The present work aims to describe academic performance, school desertion and the emotional paradigm of the university students of the accounting school of the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (FCPBUAP). We have found that low academic performance is related to students´ economic deficiency, which affects their concentration on their studies, as well as the realization of works and tasks assigned.  Schedules offered by university cause conflict with their paid work schedules, provoking difficulty in planning and organizing their scholastic and labor activities.  The low wages of the students and their parents cover neither personal nor academic needs (books, materials, computer).  Other factors which affect academic performance and school desertion are: pregnancy, depression, family disintegration, stress, distrust, lack of communication, addiction, domestic violence, lack of respect, lack of communication, etc. therefore it is very common for students to be sad, unmotivated, frustrated, or to feel like leaving college; In addition, many of them did not choose their career by self-conviction, but by influence, family tradition or fashion.  Furthermore, the lack of understanding of educational authorities discourages students.

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