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Contrary to standard search models predictions, past studies have not found a positive effect of unemployment insurance (UI) on reemployment wages. We estimate a positive UI wage effect exploiting an age-based regression discontinuity design in Austria. A search model incorporating duration dependence predicts two countervailing forces: UI induces workers to seek higher-wage jobs, but reduces wages by lengthening unemployment. Matching-function heterogeneity plausibly generates a negative relationship between the UI unemployment-duration and wage effects, which holds empirically in our sample and across studies, reconciling disparate wage-effect estimates. Empirically, UI raises wages by improving reemployment firm quality and attenuating wage drops.

We estimate the magnitudes of reduced earnings, work hours, and wage rates of workers displaced during the Great Recession using linked employer-employee panel data from Washington state. Displaced workers’ earnings losses occurred mainly because hourly wage rates dropped at the time of displacement and recovered sluggishly. Lost employer-specific premiums explain only 17 percent of these losses. Fully 70 percent of displaced workers moved to employers paying the same or higher wage premiums than the displacing employers, but these workers nevertheless suffered substantial wage rate losses. Loss of valuable specific worker-employer matches explains more than one-half of the wage losses.

In South Africa, the internship programme was introduced under the Skills Development Act of 1998, with the primary goal of addressing the country's skills shortage and fostering the growth of a skilled workforce. This act laid the foundation for various skills development initiatives, including internships, aimed at enhancing employment prospects and facilitating the transfer and development of essential skills among graduates. As a result, the pursuit of internship programme has become a prevalent practice among university and college graduates in South Africa, as they recognize its significance in securing employment and acquiring the necessary skills. Considering this, the objective of this study was to examine the relationship between internship programme and skills development within three government departments in Limpopo Province. The research employed a quantitative research approach and collected empirical data using semi-structured questionnaires. Seventy-one (71) past and present interns from the three select government departments were surveyed between October and December 2019. The data collected were analysed using Microsoft Excel. The study's findings reveal a positive nexus between the internship programme and skills development. Interns were able to acquire a diverse range of skills.  The study recommends that there should be a rotational assignment as part of the internship programme to expose interns to different departments. Internship programme should serve as a valuable platform for the transfer and development of skills, providing interns with meaningful experiential learning opportunities.

This article provides an overview of future directions for research related to refugee entrepreneurship. It puts forward key concepts, explores the relations within the current broader literature on migration and entrepreneurship, and identifies several promising clusters of questions. We also introduce five papers in a special section of this issue, which offer nuanced findings and cues for further research.

The category of not in employment, education or training (NEET) refers to young people who are recorded as neither in paid employment nor formal education either at one time point, or for a continuous period. This article assesses levels of employment scarring for those aged 36–39, at Census 2011 (prime employment years) who were recorded as NEET when aged 16–19 at Census 1991 in Scotland. Outcomes are compared for those who moved from NEET into economic activity and by gender. We find evidence that NEET status leads to long-term scarring associated with economic inactivity and unemployment and that this is only partially offset for those who moved from NEET in 1991 to be economically active in 2001. The results also highlight gendering of NEET outcomes. NEET may be a category borne of administrative convenience, rather than sociological consistency but, as intended, it captures a group who experience disadvantage.

We document in the Survey of Income and Program Participation covering the period 1990–2013 that a surprisingly large share of workers return to their previous employer after a jobless spell, and experience very different unemployment and employment outcomes than job switchers. The probability of recall is much less procyclical and volatile than the probability of finding a new employer. We add to a quantitative, and otherwise canonical, search-and-matching model of the labor market a recall option, which can be activated freely following aggregate and job-specific productivity shocks. Recall and search effort significantly amplify the cyclical volatility of new job-finding and separation probabilities.

This paper studies the differential persistent effects of initial economic conditions for labor market entrants in the United States from 1976 to 2015 by education, gender, and race using labor force survey data. We find persistent earnings and wage reductions, especially for less advantaged entrants, that increases in government support only partly offset. We confirm that the results are unaffected by selective migration and labor market entry by also using a double-weighted average unemployment rate at labor market entry for each birth cohort and state-of-birth cell based on average state migration rates and average cohort education rates from census data.

This paper presents genetic matching, a method of multivariate matching that uses an evolutionary search algorithm to determine the weight each covariate is given. Both propensity score matching and matching based on Mahalanobis distance are limiting cases of this method. The algorithm makes transparent certain issues that all matching methods must confront. We present simulation studies that show that the algorithm improves covariate balance and that it may reduce bias if the selection on observables assumption holds. We then present a reanalysis of a number of data sets in the LaLonde (1986) controversy.

Policy proposals promoting vocational education focus on the school-to-work transition. But with technological change, gains in youth employment may be offset by less adaptability and diminished employment later in life. To test for this tradeoff, we employ a difference-in-differences approach that compares employment rates across different ages for people with general and vocational education. Using microdata for 11 countries from IALS, we find strong and robust support for such a tradeoff, especially in countries emphasizing apprenticeship programs. German Microcensus data and Austrian administrative data confirm the results for within-occupational-group analysis and for exogenous variation from plant closures, respectively.

This article examines the importance of language in international migration from multiple angles by studying the role of linguistic proximity, widely spoken languages, linguistic enclaves and language-based immigration policy requirements. To this aim we collect a unique data set on immigration flows and stocks in 30 OECD destinations from all world countries over the period 1980–2010 and construct a set of linguistic proximity measures. Migration rates increase with linguistic proximity and with English at destination. Softer linguistic requirements for naturalisation and larger linguistic communities at destination encourage more migrants to move. Linguistic proximity matters less when local linguistic networks are larger.