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We use a hypothetical choice methodology to estimate preferences for workplace attributes from a sample of high-ability undergraduates attending a highly selective university.We estimate that women on average have a higher willingness to pay (WTP) for jobs with greater work flexibility and job stability, and men have a higher WTP for jobs with higher earnings growth. These job preferences relate to college major choices and to actual job choices reported in a follow-up survey four years after graduation. The gender differences in preferences explain at least a quarter of the early career gender wage gap.

Why do more educated workers experience lower unemployment rates and lower employment volatility? Empirically, these workers have similar job finding rates but much lower and less volatile separation rates than their less educated peers. We argue that on-the-job training, being complementary to formal education, is the reason for this pattern. Using a search and matching model with endogenous separations, we show that investments in match-specific human capital reduce incentives to separate but leave the job finding rate essentially unaffected. The model generates unemployment dynamics quantitatively consistent with the data. Finally, we provide novel empirical evidence supporting the mechanism studied in the article.

This article gives a rare account of the working life of a sports psychologist in the English Premier League, the elite division in English professional football. It shows how members of emerging professions such as sports psychology are a new precariat. John is more successful than many sports psychologists, but his job security is dependent on his continued ability to navigate managerial change: using his skills as a psychologist in the defence of his own employment but simultaneously keeping the (potentially sensitive) ‘psychology’ label of the work he does hidden until circumstances are propitious.

In recent decades, several Western countries have experienced a large increase in childlessness. Relatively little is known about the profiles of childless women in Italy, and virtually nothing about childless men. The aim of this paper is to address this gap by identifying typical life course trajectories of childless women and men in Italy from a gender perspective and in a cross-cohort comparison. In order to identify typical patterns I adopted a holistic perspective, applying sequence analysis to data on partnership, employment, and education for a sample of childless women and men derived from the 2009 Italian Family and Social Subjects survey. Six profiles each were identified for childless women and men, which illustrate the marked heterogeneity of the childless universe. Four out of the six were similar for both genders. Importantly, the life course of the childless evolved across cohorts, with an increasing proportion of employed women and single men in the youngest generations.

\"This article investigates whether uncertainties in female employment careers result in a postponement of family formation. Data for this analysis come from the German Socio-Economic Panel, which provides longitudinal information on economic uncertainty and fertility for the period 1984 - 2006. We employ objective measures of uncertainty (unemployment) as well as subjective measures (whether the respondent is worried about her economic situation, whether she is worried about the security of her job). We find little evidence that uncertainties in female employment careers generally lead to a postponement of parenthood. Hence, the relationship between economic uncertainty and first birth varies by level of education. While more highly educated women postpone parenthood when subject to employment uncertainties, those with low levels of education often respond to these situations by becoming mothers.\" Die Untersuchung enthält quantitative Daten. Forschungsmethode: Sekundäranalyse; empirisch; empirisch-quantitativ; Längsschnitt. Die Untersuchung bezieht sich auf den Zeitraum 1984 bis 2006. (author's abstract, IAB-Doku).

In this study, we examine the relationship between institutions of labour market and welfare states and two central aspects of job quality: autonomy and job security. Drawing on theoretical frameworks from varieties of capitalism and a power resource approach, we examine whether macro-level features can explain country differences in perceived autonomy and job security. In multi-level analyses, we combine institutional data with data from the European Social Survey (ESS), which contains information on 13,414 employees from 19 countries. We report three main findings: first, we find high autonomy in the Nordic countries and low autonomy and job security in transition countries; second, the institutional features—union density and skill specificity—are positively associated with autonomy; third, unemployment rate is the most important factor in explaining country differences in perceived job security. Our findings suggest that the power of workers and their skill specificity are important in explaining cross-country differences in autonomy. The study shows that a multi-level approach may help explain how institutions shape employment outcomes.

This paper investigates whether unemployment and insecure employment periods merely delay fertility or also impact on completed fertility in France. It analyses both the timing of first childbearing and the fertility reached at age 40. Different indicators of declining employment security are used, i.e., current individual employment characteristics, the accumulation of unstable jobs, and aggregate-level indicators of employment uncertainty. Male unemployment has a negative influence on the timing of first childbearing, while periods of insecure employment delay fertility for women. Completed fertility is impacted by unemployment spells only for men who have faced long-term unemployment. Employment uncertainty thus tends to delay first parenthood but has a relatively weak effect on lifetime fertility in France. Generous state support to families associated with a generous unemployment insurance system, and the strong French two-child family norm, may explain why economic uncertainty affects fertility less than elsewhere.

There are few attempts to benchmark job quality in a multi-dimensional perspective across Europe. Against this background, we have created a synthetic job quality index (JQI) for the EU27 countries in an attempt to shed light on the question of how European countries compare with each other and how they are developing over time in terms of job quality. Taking account of the multi-faceted nature of job quality, the JQI is compiled on the basis of six sub-indices which cover the most important dimensions of job quality as identified in the literature. The paper addresses the methods used to construct the JQI and make it comparable over time. It presents the results for 2010 and briefly addresses changes over time to illustrate the potential and limits of a multidimensional European JQI. It also considers alternative specifications for various sub-indices and tests for the impact of changes in the indicators used on the outcomes. Overall, the findings appear to confirm the feasibility and desirability of attempting to assess job quality by means of a composite index that can be periodically updated. The key strength of this approach is the possibility to monitor and benchmark EU countries' overall job quality performances and the outcomes in six sub-dimensions of job quality and compare them with each other, across gender and over time. At the same time, the limitations of such a composite index need to be borne in mind. The most important challenges are the availability (over time), timeliness and periodicity, comparability and disaggregation of data.

Job insecurity (threat of job loss) is widespread and becomes a permanent phenomenon for a lot of employees. Based on the response of 926 Finnish employees, this study investigated the direct lagged relationship between job insecurity, coping resources (job control, social support, and optimism), and employees' work- (vigor at work and job satisfaction) and family-related outcomes (work-family enrichment). Particular interest was in the moderating role of job control, support, and optimism in the job insecurity–employee outcome relationship. Our analyses of three-wave longitudinal data, collected in 2008, 2009, and 2010, showed that job control was the strongest lagged buffer against job insecurity in relation to vigor at work. In addition, social support longitudinally buffered against the negative effects of job insecurity on job satisfaction and vigor at work. However, optimism did not function as a buffering factor in any of the tested models.

Young people increasingly mix study with variable hours of employment in a precarious youth labour market. Drawing on interview material from 50 participants (supported by questionnaire data from 1294 participants) from a longitudinal study of the post-secondary school transitions in Australia, this article explores how these patterns of work and study impact on young people's friendships. As the participants left school they moved into new courses of study, in which timetables shifted each semester, and employment in which the hours they worked also varied, sometimes each week. This increasingly common temporal structure shaped the participants' lives in inconsistent and singular ways that made it more challenging for many, but not all, to find regular periods of shared time to maintain close friendships and to build new acquaintances into deeper friendships. Some participants had the resources to manage this emerging variable temporal structure without it having a major impact on their relationships.