A STUDY OF THE UNEMPLOYMENT RATE IN THE RUSSIAN LABOR MARKET. ITS CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES

The article discusses the problems associated with unemployment in Russia, types of unemployment, causes and consequences

How Internal Hiring Affects Occupational Stratification

When employers conduct more internal hiring, does this facilitate upward mobility for low-paid workers or does it protect the already advantaged? To assess the effect of within-employer job mobility on occupational stratification, we develop a framework that accounts for inequality in both rates and payoffs of job changing. Internal hiring facilitates advancement for workers without strong credentials, but it excludes workers at employers with few good jobs to advance into. Analyzing Current Population Survey data, we find that when internal hiring increases in a local labor market, it facilitates upward mobility less than when external hiring increases. When workers in low-paid occupations switch jobs, they benefit more from switching employers than from moving jobs within the same employer. One-third of this difference is due to low-paid workers isolated in industries with few high-paying jobs to transfer into. An occupationally segregated labor market therefore limits the benefits that internal hiring can bring to the workers who most need upward mobility.

Work and Demand Making: Productionist and Consumptionist Politics in Latin America

How does the world of work in Latin America affect the way workers act to defend their interests? To what extent have “productionist” demands, those concerning jobs, work conditions, and wages, which are highly salient across the region, been “displaced” by consumptionist or political demands? While the literature has distinguished formal and informal work grosso modo, we explore individual traits of work, which cross-cut the formal-informal distinction. Analyzing survey data from four Latin American capital cities, we find, not surprisingly, that both work-based atomization and insecurity depress demand making in the work arena. But these traits of work also affect demand making on the state, albeit in somewhat different ways. Insecurity is associated with a shift from productionist to consumptionist and political demands, while atomization is associated with a more generalized demobilization across issues. These findings have implications for the representation of worker interests in light of current labor market restructuring and raise the question if labor can reclaim an important voice in that restructuring process.

Pause, Pivot, and Shift: Situational Human Capital and Responses to Sudden Job Loss

How, in the wake of the coronavirus crisis, do workers respond to rapid changes in the labor market? This paper mobilizes existing literature on occupational mobility and job loss to develop a theory of situational human capital in which some workers are better positioned to weather occupational transitions than others depending on the alignment between their skill sets, opportunities, and particular contexts. Previous literature looks at this in the case of “pausing,” when workers, such as women, take time off from work. Relatively less explored but equally consequential are transitions like “pivoting,” in which workers maneuver within their occupations to adjust their practices or platforms in order to keep working, and “shifting,” in which workers change their occupations altogether. Since most government unemployment benefits focus almost exclusively on workers’ pauses, they neglect to support workers as they pivot and shift during periods of labor market instability and disruption. This paper concludes by offering some policy recommendations to fill this gap.

Reflection on Social Entrepreneurship in the Penitentiary Environment

Entrepreneurship can be a solution to the dilemma: “Labour is a form of education, a way of ensuring existence, gaining autonomy, a physical and mental training, a way of oppression, a form of occupational therapy, all together or …none of the variants listed?” Depending on the reference field and the perspectives offered by different specializations, work is defined as a physical or intellectual action, which develop material and emotional satisfactions. Especially in closed environments, it is practiced as a form of occupational therapy (ergotherapy), because it ensures a sense of usefulness, helping to maintain somato-psycho-emotional health. The schoolmasters highlight the formative values of work for students: evaluate the native skills and abilities, lead to the discovery of new unknown interests and talents, support the student in his perfection by inoculating the ideas of responsibility, order, discipline, etc. Before 1989, in detention environment labour was mandatory, but now, labour is an optional right. The two perspectives are diametrically opposed, and the issue was addressed only from the perspective of reduced job supply, both during detention and after release. There are few publications with strict reference to this topic. In general, the social reintegration of post-execution prisoners is addressed. At this moment, the main problem highlighted is integration/reintegration on the labour market, as the main facilitating step of maintaining the accumulations during the detention period and a primary factor for avoiding the recurrence. However, those who have served a custodial sentence do not have a "ticket" to the labour market. To be known and solved, the situation should be addressed continuously: prevention before detention, education/re-education/training / retraining during detention and placement on the labor market / retraining immediately after release.

Employees’ Relational Work on Social Media

Given how social media are commonly used in contemporary Nordic countries, social media platforms are emerging as crucial for relational work between employers, employees, and potential employees. By means of a discursive psychology approach, this study investigates employers’ constructs of relational work on social media through the use of two interpretative repertoires: the repertoire of loss of control and the repertoire of ever-presence. The consequences of these interpretative repertoires are a masking of power relations, especially between employers and young employees in precarious labor market positions and those with limited digital knowledge or financial means. Further, the positioning of social media as part of a private sphere of life means the invasion of not only employees’, but also managers’ private time and persona. The result of this study hence calls for the need to understand relational work on social media as part of normative managerial work.