Intergovernmental Relations and Employment Policy: The United States Experience

Policies to regulate and support labor markets in the United States have mainly been an initiative of the federal government. Historically, states and localities were reluctant to act independently to build up worker rights and protections for fear of competitively disadvantaging resident industries with added costs. Federal constitutional authority to raise revenue and control commerce among the states governed development of labor market policy in the United States. Labor market support initiatives usually have been forged in difficult economic times with contributions and compromise from the full political spectrum. This paper examines the development of employment policy in the twentieth century by viewing the interplay of federal, state, and local partners. The programs considered include unemployment insurance, training, youth programs, and the employment service. Some attention is also given to governmental policy that influences the geographic mobility of labor. Intergovernmental relations in labor market policy have resulted in a system that performs a wide variety of functions, varies greatly at the local and state levels, but maintains important federal standards nationwide.unemployment, intergovernmental, relations, employment, policy, O'Leary, Straits

Do Job Search Rules and Reemployment Services Reduce Insured Unemployment?

This paper summarizes state unemployment insurance job search policies based on a recent survey of states by the National Association of State Workforce Agencies. It then reviews research results on the effects of reemployment services on durations of insured unemployment. The paper documents how state administrative practices have changed and questions whether these changes may have affected monitoring of claimant compliance with work search requirements. Since state policies on job search and service referral can affect insured durations of unemployment, these policies can also affect the measured total unemployment rate. This paper reflects the opinions of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the positions or viewpoints of the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research or the U.S. Department of Labor.unemployment insurance, work test, job search assistance, reemployment, public employment service

Unemployment Compensation and Older Workers

Unemployment compensation in the United States is provided through a federal-state system of unemployment insurance (UI). UI provides temporary partial wage replacement to active job seekers who are involuntarily out of work. For older workers, UI is an important source of income security and a potential influence on work incentives. For many, the transition from full-time work in a career job to retirement is voluntary and orderly. For others, job displacement greatly disrupts plans. The transition often involves many intermediate steps. The chain of transitions may include full- or part-time work on another job which most often is not in the same industry and occupation (a bridge job). There may also be movement between bridge jobs, perhaps back from a bridge job to a career job, and finally a gradual movement into full retirement while out of the labor force. Many issues at the forefront of current UI policy debate are also issues of prime importance to those in the second half of their working life. Issues occur in all the standard areas of UI policy: coverage, eligibility, benefit adequacy, duration of benefits, work incentives, benefit financing, and interaction with other programs. This paper provides a brief background sketch of the labor market situation of older workers to examine issues of prime concern to older workers in these areas of UI policy. Our survey of policy issues suggests that changes in UI rules concerning, initial eligibility, continuing eligibility, wage replacement, and partial benefits should all be examined to evaluate effects on the likely employment patterns of older workers. Particular attention should be given to UI features affecting the choice of self-employment, part-time work, seasonal work, and agricultural jobs. The financing consequences of possible UI program changes should also be estimated, as should the macroeconomic impact of broadening recipiency. UI program features which would promote flexible and extended labor force participation by older workers should also enrich the employment choice environment for other workers. Therefore, it would be useful to examine the impact of such program changes on UI as a built-in stabilizer of aggregate expenditures. While younger workers are usually committed to long-term participation in the labor force, older citizens are often more flexible in choosing to use their time. Worsening labor shortage conditions in the United States mean that efforts to retain older workers in the labor force will intensify. The current and potential influence of UI on the income security and labor force participation of older workers should be well understood.unemployment, insurance, compensation, older, workers, O'Leary, Wandner

A 2D ultrasonic array design incorporating hexagonal-shaped elements for NDE applications

Contemporary 2D Ultrasonic arrays suffer from low SNR and limited steering capabilities. Yet, there is a great desire in the industry to increase the operational frequency, in order to enhance their volumetric imaging resolution. State-of-the art arrays use an orthogonal matrix of rectangular elements as this is a natural step forward from the conventional 1D array structure. The objective of this work is to evaluate properties of triangular, rather than rectangular ceramic pillars in a 1-3 connectivity piezoelectric composite for application in a hexagonal-element 2D array. A 3MHz prototype device exploiting new hexagonal substructure have been manufactured. Measured mechanical cross-coupling level is -21.9dB between neighbouring hexagonal elements, providing validation of simulation result. Corroboration between measured and FE modelled device behaviour is demonstrated

An annular array with fiber composite microstructure for far field NDT imaging applications

This paper describes the design and fabrication of a reduced element count annular array for far field NDT imaging applications, built with a random fiber piezoelectric composite microstructure. An annular array design is considered, spatially it offers axi-symmetric layout while reducing number of array elements, which could potentially result in a significant reduction in the cost and complexity of building an ultrasonic volumetric imaging system. Modelling and preliminary experimental results are presented to evaluate the feasibility of this approach

Cost-Effectiveness of Targeted Reemployment Bonuses

Targeting reemployment bonus offers to unemployment insurance (UI) claimants identified as most likely to exhaust benefits is estimated to reduce benefit payments. While earlier research indicated that non-targeted reemployment bonus offers would not be good public policy, in this paper we show that targeting bonus offers with profiling models similar to those in state Worker Profiling and Reemployment Services (WPRS) systems can improve their cost effectiveness. Since estimated average benefit payments do not steadily decline as the eligibility screen is gradually tightened, we find that narrow targeting is not optimal. The best candidate to emerge for a targeted reemployment bonus is a low bonus amount with a long qualification period, targeted to the half of profiled claimants most likely to exhaust their UI benefit entitlement.reemployment, bonus, UI, personal, accounts, PRA, unemployment, insurance, Upjohn, Institute, O'Leary, Decker, Wandner

Which primary care practitioners have poor human papillomavirus (HPV) knowledge? A step towards informing the development of professional education initiatives

Background: Primary care practitioners (PCP) play key roles in cervical cancer prevention. Human papillomavirus (HPV) knowledge is an important influence on PCPs’ cervical cancer prevention-related behaviours. We investigated HPV knowledge, and associated factors, among general practitioners (GPs) and practice nurses. Methods: A survey, including factual questions about HPV infection and vaccination, was mailed to GPs and practice nurses in Ireland. Multivariable logistic regression was used to determine which PCPs had low knowledge (questions correctly answered: infection ≤5/11; vaccination: ≤4/10). Questions least often answered correctly were identified. Results: 697 PCPs participated. For HPV infection, GPs and practice nurses answered a median of nine and seven questions correctly, respectively (p⅓ of PCPs. Conclusions: There are important limitations in HPV infection and vaccination knowledge among PCPs. By identifying factors associated with poor knowledge, and areas of particular uncertainty, these results can inform development of professional education initiatives thereby ensuring women have access to uniformly high-quality HPV-related information and advice

Analysis of ultrasonic transducers with fractal architecture

Ultrasonic transducers composed of a periodic piezoelectric composite are generally accepted as the design of choice in many applications. Their architecture is normally very regular and this is due to manufacturing constraints rather than performance optimisation. Many of these manufacturing restrictions no longer hold due to new production methods such as computer controlled, laser cutting, and so there is now freedom to investigate new types of geometry. In this paper, the plane wave expansion model is utilised to investigate the behaviour of a transducer with a self-similar architecture. The Cantor set is utilised to design a 2-2 conguration, and a 1-3 conguration is investigated with a Sierpinski Carpet geometry

The new control system of the SPS target sector

The SPS, the Super Proton Synchrotron at CERN, is an accelerator originally designed and commissioned in 1976 for protons. The control system of the SPS target stations, beam absorbers and other aperture limiting devices was developed in the seventies. It was mainly based on home made electronics and equipment dependent software. With time, this electronics has become obsolete, difficult to maintain in operation and not suitable for integration into a modern control system. In 1997, a project was set up to modernise the electronics and the related software. The new control system is largely based on standard industrial hardware and software components. SIEMENS Simatic S7-300 programmable logic controllers have been used as equipment controllers and connected through PROFIBUS to a Windows-NT front-end PC running the SIEMENS WinCC SCADA package which acts as local controller and remote access gateway. This fully industrial solution has been successfully integrated into the actual SPS accelerator control infrastructure and is open to other industrial communication protocols. The design, development and realisation of the selected solution have been outsourced to industry

Hypervelocity Stars from the Andromeda Galaxy

Hypervelocity stars (HVSs) discovered in the Milky Way (MW) halo are thought to be ejected from near the massive black hole (MBH) at the galactic centre. In this paper we investigate the spatial and velocity distributions of the HVSs which are expected to be similarly produced in the Andromeda galaxy (M31). We consider three different HVS production mechanisms: (i) the disruption of stellar binaries by the galactocentric MBH; (ii) the ejection of stars by an in-spiraling intermediate mass black hole; and (iii) the scattering of stars off a cluster of stellar-mass black holes orbiting around the MBH. While the first two mechanisms would produce large numbers of HVSs in M31, we show that the third mechanism would not be effective in M31. We numerically calculate 1.2*10^6 trajectories of HVSs from M31 within a simple model of the Local Group and hence infer the current distribution of these stars. Gravitational focusing of the HVSs by the MW and the diffuse Local Group medium leads to high densities of low mass (~ solar mass) M31 HVSs near the MW. Within the virialized MW halo, we expect there to be of order 1000 HVSs for the first mechanism and a few hundred HVSs for the second mechanism; many of these stars should have distinctively large approach velocities (< -500 km/s). In addition, we predict ~5 hypervelocity RGB stars within the M31 halo which could be identified observationally. Future MW astrometric surveys or searches for distant giants could thus find HVSs from M31.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures, changed to match version accepted by MNRA