What Makes Our Medical Laboratory Workforce Unique?

Introduction/Objective A career in the medical laboratory requires advanced education and technical training. To assist both employers and employees, several government organizations conduct demographic, education, and wage surveys for the general U.S. labor market. Through its workforce surveys, the American Society of Clinical Pathology (ASCP) does the same for the medical laboratory professions. Our aim was to compare the findings of these surveys and identify similarities and dissimilarities between the general labor pool and the medical laboratory workforce. Methods/Case Report Since the 2021 ASCP Wage survey is currently open, we reviewed the findings described in ASCP’s 2019 Wage Survey of Medical Laboratories in the United States (Am J Clin Pathol 2021;155:649-673) with the publicly available information (for 2019) on demographics, educational attainment, and average hourly earnings available on the websites of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (www.bls.gov) as well as United States Census (www.census.gov). Results (if a Case Study enter NA) In 2019, the male: female ratio was 52.9:47.1 in general labor pool and 19.1:80.9 in the medical laboratory workforce. The average age of a worker in the general labor pool was 41.9 years and was 42 years in the medical laboratory workforce. The average hourly earnings were $27.99/hour in the general labor pool and ranged from $16.64/hour (phlebotomists) to $53.95/hour (pathologists assistants) in the medical laboratory workforce, with the MLS/MT/CLS earning $30.02/hour to $52.53/hour. While 33.1% adults in the U.S. have attained a bachelor’s degree or above, 73.79% have attained this in the medical laboratory workforce. Conclusion Compared to the general labor pool, the medical laboratory workforce is a highly educated workforce and has a higher participation by women. The average worker age and average hourly wage are comparable. We encourage laboratorians to participate in ASCP surveys since such surveys reveal data that can drive better prospects for the medical laboratory workforce.

Love, Hate, and Controversy in a School District: A Teacher Couple’s Messy Divorce

Teachers who are married to other teachers within a school district often experience their personal life events in full view of the school community. How should a principal respond when a math teacher wants to leave due to her divorce, knowing that math teachers are hard to find? Challenges in this case for campus principals and human resource administrators include (a) hiring high-quality teachers in a tight labor pool, (b) providing new teacher induction, and (c) evaluating and responding to performance issues of teachers during times of high emotional stress.

Genesis and prerequisites for the emergence of youth parliamentarism in the Russian Federation

The object of this research is the regional youth representative structures, while the subject is the establishment of youth parliamentary structures in the Russian Federation. The research leans on the methodology of historical neo-institutionalism with the “path dependence” approach. Attention is turned to studying the topic from the perspective of the need of federal and regional government in young personnel, substantiated by the shortage of competent specialists as a result of social disturbances. The empirical basis of this research is the interview with the former governor of Vologda Region (from 1996 to 2011) Vyacheslav Pozgalev, who was among the pioneers of the youth parliamentary movement. The novelty of this lies in examination of the phenomenon of youth parliamentarism in historical aspect. The date of creation of the first youth parliamentary body in Russia is established. The author determines five key prerequisites for the emergence of youth parliamentarism in the Russian Federation: European Charter; proliferation of the Western democratic values; political situation in the country; need for conventional self-expression of youth and creation of the filter for the youth labor pool. These prerequisites contributed the emergence and development of the institutions for expressing the political demands of the youth in the context of continuous dialogue ion with the federal and local government.

Labor Welfare in On-Demand Service Platforms

Problem definition: An on-demand service platform relies on independent workers (agents) who decide how much time, if any, to devote to the platform. Some labor advocates have argued that an expansion of the labor pool hurts agents—by reducing the wage and agent utilization (i.e., the fraction of time an agent is busy serving customers). Motivated by concern for agent welfare, regulators are considering measures that reduce the labor pool size or that impose a floor on the nominal wage or effective wage (i.e., the product of the nominal wage and agent utilization). Are agents indeed hurt by an expansion in the labor pool size? Which type of wage-floor regulation is preferable? Are consumers hurt by the imposition of a wage floor? Academic/practical relevance: Because independent agents work without the traditional protections intended to ensure the welfare of employees, the welfare of those agents is an important concern. Methodology: We employ an equilibrium model that accounts for the interaction among price, wage, labor supply, customer delay, and demand. Results: Average labor welfare increases and then decreases in the labor pool size; that is, agents are harmed by an expansion in the labor pool size if and only if the labor pool size is sufficiently large. The effective wage floor is superior to the nominal wage floor in terms of labor welfare maximization. More generally, the two types of wage floors have structurally different effects on labor welfare, with a floor on the nominal wage only beneficial to agents if it is sufficiently small. Contrary to the conventional view that consumers are hurt by an effective wage floor (because they face a higher price, due to upward pressure on the wage, and longer delay, due to upward pressure on agent utilization), consumers actually benefit. Managerial implications: Regulators, labor advocates, platform managers, and agents benefit from understanding the forces that create and destroy labor welfare.

A Theory of Assurance: Balancing Costly Formal Control with Tone at the Top

Informal tone at the top (TATT) is widely regarded as a fundamental ingredient of organizational control, yet because of its soft nature, the scholarship on TATT has not emphasized mathematical modeling. Observing that TATT refers to the example set by top management, I model TATT as, ceteris paribus, reflecting the expectation that the chief executive officer (CEO) will not divert organizational resources for personal benefit. The setting assumes that CEOs are randomly drawn from a labor pool containing candidates who either value career prospects (high type) or who do not value career prospects (low type). The fear of dismissal and a damaged career mean that high types tend to be less opportunistic than low types, who divert for personal gain. Contrary to the belief that trust and vulnerability go hand in hand, I identify conditions where TATT and optimal costly formal controls are complements. But I also show in the same setting that TATT and optimal formal controls can be substitutes. The results also explain why high levels of TATT may not be welcomed by the external auditor or certain stakeholders and explain ambiguous Sarbanes-Oxley reports. This paper was accepted by Suraj Srinivasan, accounting.

The stable stranger

Drawing on ethnographic material from Gitanos of Spain and current EU Roma integration policies, we explore the contemporary construction of the Roma ethnic group category as a specific type of “stranger” in the context of the European neoliberal culture complex. Our argument is that this classificatory reconstruction can be seen to work as a cultural prerequisite for the socio-political shaping and management of the Roma as a neoliberal “stable stranger.” This new stranger is based on constructing Roma as a potential unused labor pool and as recent immigrants, in contrast to the Gitanos’ own ideology and locally grounded identity of self-employment and anti-proletarianism. The paradoxical consequence of the integration policies, therefore, is the potential pushing of the Gitanos further away from Spanish mainstream society.

Trans Studies and Resistance in an Academy Based on Masculinity Contest Culture

Trans studies is a burgeoning and global interdisciplinary field of scholarship. Although trans people in general continue to remain on the margins of the academy in Canada and the United States, some of the trans scholars who contribute to the field of trans studies are in continuing faculty (tenure-track and tenured) positions. Trans women in general and trans women and trans feminine people of color, in particular, however, are particularly underrepresented in this labor pool. The author brings together a theoretical pastiche consisting of a Black feminist analysis of patriarchy as a layered phenomenon, trans necropolitics, and a masculinity contest culture paradigm to trouble this limit to representation within trans studies in Canada and the United States.

Labor demographics and productivity: all-star roster turnover and foreigners

PurposeTalent compression is the labor market phenomenon where the average productivity differential between participants declines and has been used to explain the overall increase in competition within some professional sports markets. A finding that competitiveness is uniquely driven by talent compression is consistent with Rottenberg (1956), who argued that resource distribution is independent of factors that are invariant to labor productivity.Design/methodology/approachRather than incorporate MLB team roster turnover as many of the past studies have done, we prefer to measure of all-star turnover in membership. Problematically, movement from an MLB team to an MLB team is limited by rule, finances and the fact that there are very few teams competing for player services. In contrast, All-Star membership is typically costlessly chosen by many millions of fans, league players and managers. In this way, All-Star voting should be invariant to many of the factors that affect movement from an MLB team to an MLB team.FindingsIn the end, we find that a close association between all-star turnover rates and the makeup of MLB’s labor pool.Originality/valueThe paper offers a new measure of player mobility.

Agglomeration Effect of Skill-Based Local Labor Pooling: Evidence of South Korea

Since workplace skills present diverse dimensions of a worker’s ability, it has recently received renewed interest by researchers examining the growth of cities. The purpose of the paper explores the advantage of regional concentrations of workers specialized in different types of skills. Specifically, the analysis estimates the agglomeration effects of skill-based labor pooling on wage levels and wage growth in South Korea. To this end, it constructs skill-based labor pool indices for cognitive, social, technical, and physical skills at a provincial level. The indices show an uneven geographical distribution in varying degrees across four types of skills. The regression results indicate that the urban wage premium of skill-based local labor pooling varies according to types of skills. The greatest magnitude of benefit is incurred by workers in cognitive-skill-oriented occupations and moderate benefits are found in technical- and physical-skill-oriented occupations. An urban wage premium is non-existent in social-skill-oriented occupations. In addition, the wage growth model with job mobility shows that the urban wage premium immediately affects workers who change jobs and relocate to denser areas. As high-wage occupations earn higher wage premiums when workers in these occupations are concentrated, it supports patterns of the polarization of both skills and their effects.

BUMIDOM

The demographics of contemporary France show that there are an estimated 800,000 people of French Caribbean birth or descent presently living on the French mainland. Problematizating this presence properly begins with the end of the Second World War and the advent of two events closely situated in time: the inauguration of the ‘Trente Glorieuses’ period of French economic expansion (approximately 1946-1975), and the departmentalization law of March 1946. The need to respond to postwar labor shortages, and to regulate and stabilize the labour force being brought into France to address these shortages, gave rise to the birth of BUMIDOM as a state agency early in the Fifth Republic. BUMIDOM’s goal was to furnish a state-organized and -controlled labor pool. Migration to the metropole – and its attendant ethnic, cultural and linguistic corollaries there along with the socioeconomic transformation of the DOMs – has probably been the most visible consequence of BUMIDOM’s creation.