THE WAGES SYSTEM IN ROMANIA – BETWEEN CONVERGENCE AND DISCRIMINATION. SUSTAINABILITY OR OVER-REGULATION?

The wages system in Romania is a subject of great importance. Although, apparently, the situation on the labour market has improved during the last years, compared to the member countries of the European Union there are many problems in Romania, due to an inadequate structure in the national economy, the way in which privatization and economy restructuring were performed, the mass emigration labour market, which have generated imbalances between labour supply and demand. The paper aims at highlighting the changes in the salary system in Romania in the period of post-accession to the European Union. An analysis was conducted, the official statistical data on the evolution of the average net monthly salary were detailed, differentiated by size classes of economic agents, by gender and by sectors of the national economy. Keywords: labour market, discrimination, wages, public sector, private sector

Immigrant integration and social investment

This article offers an overview of scholarship on social investment policies in relation to the integration of immigrants and the role they can play in multicultural societies. At first sight, social investment is a promising strategy to deal with the inequalities in human capital and life chances that plague multicultural societies. However, on the basis of the available knowledge, the article shows that the benefit of social investment interventions for immigrants may be lower than expected for two main reasons. First, there are access biases in most typical social investment policies (for example, childcare, active labour market policies, training) that tend to limit participation by non-natives. Second, employers’ recruitment preferences and labour market discrimination are also likely to limit the potential of social investment interventions for immigrants. I conclude that to exploit the full potential of social investment policies in the promotion of immigrant integration, these policies need to be adapted, particularly by taking into account the essential role played by employers.

What does someone's gender identity signal to employers?

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the mechanisms underlying hiring discrimination against transgender men.Design/methodology/approachThe authors conduct a scenario experiment with final-year business students in which fictitious hiring decisions are made about transgender or cisgender male job candidates. More importantly, these candidates are scored on statements related to theoretical reasons for hiring discrimination given in the literature. The resulting data are analysed using a bivariate analysis. Additionally, a multiple mediation model is run.FindingsSuggestive evidence is found for co-worker and customer taste-based discrimination, but not for employer taste-based discrimination. In addition, results show that transgender men are perceived as being in worse health, being more autonomous and assertive, and have a lower probability to go on parental leave, compared with cisgender men, revealing evidence for (positive and negative) statistical discrimination.Social implicationsTargeted policy measures are needed given the substantial labour market discrimination against transgender individuals measured in former studies. However, to combat this discrimination effectively, one needs to understand its underlying mechanisms. This study provides the first comprehensive exploration of these mechanisms.Originality/valueThis study innovates in being one of the first to explore the relative empirical importance of dominant (theoretical) explanations for hiring discrimination against transgender men. Thereby, the authors take the logical next step in the literature on labour market discrimination against transgender individuals.

Utrikes föddas etablering på arbetsmarknaden

Immigrants’ labour market integration – an important issue for public sector financesIn 2019, around 1.9 million individuals, or about 20 per cent of Sweden’s total population, were born abroad. Against this background the labour market integration of the foreign-born population is of great importance. Immigrants who adapt rapidly to the Swedish labour market will contribute to public sector finances while immigrants who adapt poorly will constitute a burden to the Swedish public sector finances. In this article we shed new light on the issue of immigrants’ labour market integration by presenting new figures obtained from data bases at Statistics Sweden. It emerges that the employment rate is around 9 percentage points higher among native-born males than among foreign-born males (in the 15–74 age group) while it is around 7 percentage points higher among native-born females than among foreign-born females. Some groups are found to have difficulties in entering the Swedish labour market. The employment rate among males and females originating from Asian or African countries is around 15 percentage points lower than the employment rate among male and female natives. Individuals with refugee background have certain difficulties with integration on the labour market. A large share of the individuals from these groups have relatively low educational attainment. This suggests that different measures, such as measures to increase the refugees’ human capital, measures to reduce the employers’ costs of hiring as well as measures to counteract labour market discrimination are needed in order to improve the labour market position of the immigrant population in Sweden.

Self-Employment Dynamics of Immigrants and Natives: Individual-level Analysis for the Canadian Labour Market

This paper analyses the dynamic transitions of self-employment in four states of the Canadian labour market (paid-employment, self-employment, unemployment, and being out of the labour force) by answering three core questions: (1) What are the determinants of the transitions into and out of the four labour market states? (2) Are the probabilities of transitions between immigrants and natives significantly different, and if so, are they due to entry–exit rate gaps between immigrants and natives? (3) What are the proportions of spurious and structural state dependence in the labour market states of immigrants and natives? Our analysis was based on longitudinal data from Canada’s Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) for males aged 25 to 55 for the period 1993 to 2004. Our results revealed that immigrants rather than natives are relatively more likely to be self-employed during the unemployment period. The findings also confirmed that males with positive investment income or wealth tended to be largely self-employed. From a policy perspective, the government provision of financial support towards self-employment positively benefits natives in seeking self-employment opportunities. Government policies to lessen labour market discrimination promotes the self-employment of immigrants.

Do Hiring Practices Penalize Women and Benefit Men for Having Children? Experimental Evidence from Germany

Although observational studies from many countries have consistently shown that motherhood negatively affects women’s wages, experimental findings on its effect on the likelihood of being hired are less conclusive. Motherhood penalties in hiring have been reported in the United States, the prototypical liberal market economy, but not in Sweden, the prototypical social-democratic welfare state. Based on a field experiment in Germany, this study examines the effects of parenthood on hiring processes in the prototypical conservative welfare state. My findings indicate that job recruitment processes indeed penalize women but not men for having children. In addition to providing theoretical explanations for why motherhood penalties in hiring are particularly likely to occur in the German context, this study also highlights several methodological and practical issues that should be considered when conducting correspondence studies to examine labour market discrimination.