An unsustainable sector?

As settings battle to remain sustainable in the face of rising costs and the Covid-19 pandemic, the increase in the National Living Wage in April 2022 seems set to force an increasing number to close their doors permanently. Sue Cowley takes a look at the latest picture around early years funding, staff pay and conditions, and the sustainability of settings.

Comparison of resident and intern salaries with the current living wage as a quantitative estimate of financial strain among postgraduate veterinary trainees

OBJECTIVE To compare resident and intern salaries with current regional living wages as a quantitative estimate of financial strain. SAMPLE 152 residency programs and 141 internship programs listed with the Veterinary Internship and Residency Matching Program for the 2021–2022 training year. PROCEDURES Data were collected for program annual salary and location. Regional living wage for each location was determined with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Living Wage Calculator, and annual salary was compared with living wage to estimate income surplus before and after taxes. Results for programs in academia and private practice were compared. Spearman correlation was used to determine whether program annual salary was significantly associated with regional living wage. RESULTS Mean ± SD income surplus before taxes was $7,786 ± 9,426 for clinical residency programs, $16,672 ± 5,105 for laboratory animal programs, and $5,829 ± 8,119 for internships. Academic residencies and internships offered salaries significantly lower than those offered in private practice, and income surpluses before and after taxes were significantly lower for academic programs than for private practice programs. There were weak and moderate, respectively, correlations between program annual salary and regional living wage for residency (r = 0.369) and internship (r = 0.570) programs. CLINICAL RELEVANCE Postgraduate training prolongs financial instability, and annual salaries generally do not meet the minimum income standard of a living wage. Financial stress has implications for mental health and diversity, and these findings invite deeper consideration of current remuneration practices for veterinary residents and interns.

Reforming wage policy for workers towards living wage in Vietnam

Currently, in Vietnam, wage policy is implemented through an important tool, the minimum wage. However, the reality shows that the use of the minimum wage to pay employees is still inadequate and far from reality. Instead of using the minimum wage, a number of developed countries have recently used a new concept in wage policy making, which is “living wage” with high efficiency. In line with the trend of international integration, a living wage needs to be recognized and researched and applied in practice in Vietnam to bring about more positive effects, ensuring the life of workers and the whole country the sustainable development of the business. The article uses information and secondary data to analyze the current situation of minimum wages, scientific basis for living wages and policy implications to aim at workers with a living wage in the future.

living wage of workers in Vietnam

Currently, Vietnam implements wage policy making through the important tool of minimum wage. However, the reality shows that the use of the minimum wage to pay employees is still inadequate and far from reality. Instead of using the minimum wage, a number of developed countries have recently used a new concept in wage policy making, which is “living wage” with high efficiency. In line with the trend of the world, the living wage needs to be recognized and researched and applied in practice in Vietnam to bring about more positive effects, ensuring the life of employees and the whole family. sustainable development of enterprises.

Living wage for workers in conditions of industrial development in Vietnam

The living wage is defined by researchers as the salary that workers receive during normal working hours, which is enough to maintain a decent standard of living for themselves and their families. Therefore, it is different from the concept of minimum wage being applied as a basis for paying wages to workers today. Vietnam's minimum wage is calculated as the minimum to escape poverty, but not the minimum wage to ensure a decent minimum living in a developed economy. The minimum level to escape poverty is often applied in the condition that the country prioritizes economic development, but in the current period, the minimum wage must be a living wage to realize inclusive and inclusive development. leave behind. In the condition that Vietnam has become a middle-income country, the minimum wage Vietnam needs to aim for must be a living minimum wage. Therefore, this article analyzes the basis of paying a living wage for workers in Vietnam in the context of changing the economic model from the traditional to the industrial development model in Vietnam today.

Essays in Labour Economics: Evidence from Voluntary and Mandatory Wage Floors in the United States and New Zealand

<p>This thesis expands the literature on minimum and living wages by investigating local minimum wage ordinances and voluntary living wage programs. This thesis is presented as three distinct papers; the first explores a county-wide minimum wage ordinance in New Mexico, USA, while papers 2 and 3 explore New Zealand’s voluntary living wage program. In the United States, local minimum wage ordinances are growing in popularity, and research is emerging on their effects. Setting minimum wages at the local level is politically easier than enacting Federal legislation, and local minimum wages may be better targeted to local economic conditions. In my first chapter, “Local Minimum Wage Laws and Labour Market Outcomes: Evidence from New Mexico,” I use fixed effects and synthetic control analysis to uncover the effects of a local minimum wage law on the Albuquerque/Bernalillo region of New Mexico, with a focus on how provisions exempting tipped workers affect gains in earnings. My findings reveal that these provisions can lead to reductions in hourly wages for workers exempted from the minimum wage even when the labour market is not harmed overall. I find that the minimum wage ordinance did not reduce teen employment but that it served to increase the supply of teen labour leading to an increase in the teen unemployment rate. The second and third papers in this thesis address the voluntary living wage program in New Zealand. In the first quantitative work on New Zealand’s living wage, I utilize data from Statistics New Zealand’s Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI) to explore several facets of the living wage experience for employers and employees. In the second paper, “The New Zealand Living Wage: Earnings, Labour Costs and Turnover,” I investigate the characteristics of New Zealand living wage firms and use fixed effects to examine the impact of living wage certification on employment, worker earnings and turnover. My results provide some evidence for increases in labour costs and worker earnings following certification but find that this change is driven by changes in small firms that employ few workers. I find no evidence of a reduction in turnover. In my final chapter, “Who Benefits from Living Wage Certification?” I investigate the distribution of benefits from the living wage based on an employees’ pre-treatment earnings, time of hire and whether or not they remained employed with the living wage firm. To do this, I utilize a worker-level panel dataset containing the full earnings history of all workers that were employed for a living wage or matched control firm between January 2014 and December 2015. I use fixed effects models containing fixed effects for worker, firm and month to compare patterns of earnings growth for workers hired before certification (‘pre-hires’) with those hired after certification (‘joiners’) and those who left their living wage job but remained in the workforce (‘leavers’). I also estimate the impact of living wage employment on the earnings of low-income workers. I find that the financial benefit of the living wage accrues almost exclusively to workers hired after certification and to low income workers. In addition, my analysis on the worker-level panel suggests that overall earnings growth in living wage firms lagged that in control firms over the observation period. This result is driven by relative declines in earnings for living wage workers in large firms and is attributed to increases in the published living wage rate that lags behind wage growth in the relevant segments of the job market.</p>

Essays in Labour Economics: Evidence from Voluntary and Mandatory Wage Floors in the United States and New Zealand

<p>This thesis expands the literature on minimum and living wages by investigating local minimum wage ordinances and voluntary living wage programs. This thesis is presented as three distinct papers; the first explores a county-wide minimum wage ordinance in New Mexico, USA, while papers 2 and 3 explore New Zealand’s voluntary living wage program. In the United States, local minimum wage ordinances are growing in popularity, and research is emerging on their effects. Setting minimum wages at the local level is politically easier than enacting Federal legislation, and local minimum wages may be better targeted to local economic conditions. In my first chapter, “Local Minimum Wage Laws and Labour Market Outcomes: Evidence from New Mexico,” I use fixed effects and synthetic control analysis to uncover the effects of a local minimum wage law on the Albuquerque/Bernalillo region of New Mexico, with a focus on how provisions exempting tipped workers affect gains in earnings. My findings reveal that these provisions can lead to reductions in hourly wages for workers exempted from the minimum wage even when the labour market is not harmed overall. I find that the minimum wage ordinance did not reduce teen employment but that it served to increase the supply of teen labour leading to an increase in the teen unemployment rate. The second and third papers in this thesis address the voluntary living wage program in New Zealand. In the first quantitative work on New Zealand’s living wage, I utilize data from Statistics New Zealand’s Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI) to explore several facets of the living wage experience for employers and employees. In the second paper, “The New Zealand Living Wage: Earnings, Labour Costs and Turnover,” I investigate the characteristics of New Zealand living wage firms and use fixed effects to examine the impact of living wage certification on employment, worker earnings and turnover. My results provide some evidence for increases in labour costs and worker earnings following certification but find that this change is driven by changes in small firms that employ few workers. I find no evidence of a reduction in turnover. In my final chapter, “Who Benefits from Living Wage Certification?” I investigate the distribution of benefits from the living wage based on an employees’ pre-treatment earnings, time of hire and whether or not they remained employed with the living wage firm. To do this, I utilize a worker-level panel dataset containing the full earnings history of all workers that were employed for a living wage or matched control firm between January 2014 and December 2015. I use fixed effects models containing fixed effects for worker, firm and month to compare patterns of earnings growth for workers hired before certification (‘pre-hires’) with those hired after certification (‘joiners’) and those who left their living wage job but remained in the workforce (‘leavers’). I also estimate the impact of living wage employment on the earnings of low-income workers. I find that the financial benefit of the living wage accrues almost exclusively to workers hired after certification and to low income workers. In addition, my analysis on the worker-level panel suggests that overall earnings growth in living wage firms lagged that in control firms over the observation period. This result is driven by relative declines in earnings for living wage workers in large firms and is attributed to increases in the published living wage rate that lags behind wage growth in the relevant segments of the job market.</p>

Sweat Equity: Student scholarships in Aotearoa New Zealand’s Universities

This paper responds to calls from past and present students to increase the value of postgraduate scholarships in Aotearoa New Zealand. Here we provide context for understanding the scholarship landscape in Aotearoa, including how scholarships are understood in relation to dominant neoliberal framings of higher education and persistent inequities within the sector. We present data which provides insight into the current inequities in Summer, Masters and PhD scholarship values. The average value of PhD scholarships has remained stagnant between 2011 and 2019 resulting in the average being $11,238 less than the Living Wage in 2019. We show that the average length of time full-time PhD students take to complete their doctorates exceeds the three-year tenure of scholarships. We argue the status-quo of low scholarships, supplemented by postgraduate ‘sweat’, excludes people from participating in postgraduate education, preventing them and their communities from realising the public benefits that such an education can produce. We suggest that these inadequacies could be addressed through 1) raising Summer, Masters and PhD scholarships to the living wage; 2) extending tenure of PhD scholarships; and 3) reinstating the postgraduate student allowance.