European Jobs Monitor 2014: Drivers of Recent Job Polarisation and Upgrading in Europe

[Excerpt] European labour markets added nearly 30 million new jobs in a golden age of employment creation prior to the onset of the Great Recession in 2008. These labour markets subsequently shed six million jobs, and unemployment peaked at 11% in 2013, its highest rate in well over a decade. This third annual European Jobs Monitor report looks in detail at recent shifts in employment at Member State and European Union level in the two years from the second quarter of 2011 to the second quarter of 2013. It applies a jobs-based approach, which ranks jobs according to wage and then groups them into five categories of equal size (quintiles) ranging from lowest-paid to highest-paid. The net employment change between the starting and concluding periods (in terms of people employed) for each quintile in each country is summed to establish whether there has been net gain or loss. This analytic approach enables employment shifts to be described quantitatively (how many jobs were created or destroyed) and qualitatively (what sectors and occupations were most affected). The report also examines some of the likely drivers of recent shifts in the employment structure: technological advances, as measured by the cognitive and routine task content of jobs; globalisation and trade, measured as the offshorability of tasks or direct international trade; and labour market institutions

A Coordinated EU Minimum Wage Policy?

[Excerpt] Minimum wages exist in all EU member states, even if, as we shall see in this report, they are set up and established in very different ways. Minimum wages, in fact, can be considered as a cornerstone of the “European Social Model”. Yet, the on-going process of European integration has so far had very little to do with them. Wages are explicitly excluded from the competences of European institutions in the existing treaties, contrary to other areas of work and employment such as working time or health and safety. But in the context of increasing European integration, it seems at least plausible that sooner or later there would be some attempt of coordinating this important aspect of social policy across countries. As we will see in this report, the idea has been discussed at the European level several times since the EU was born, and it seems to be gaining momentum the context of the current economic crisis. Of course, the discussion is by no means settled, as many important European and national actors consider that this area should remain within the remit of national governments and according to national traditions and practices. It is certainly possible that wages, and minimum wages, would remain squarely at the level of national competence in the foreseeable future. Still, it seems like a worthwhile exercise (useful to the debate) to explore what kind of implications would be associated with such a coordination of European minimum wage policy. This is what we will try to do in this report. Without taking ourselves a position, we will try to provide arguments and facts that we hope can be useful in this debate. The report is organized in two big sections. In the first one, we will discuss the theoretical and policy considerations around a coordinated EU minimum wage policy. We will review the social sciences literature on the effects of minimum wages, present a broad picture of the current debates around the coordination of EU minimum wage policy and discuss the institutional difficulties that such a coordination would in our view have to face. In other words, that section will try to provide a balanced summary of the theoretical and policy arguments around this debate. The second big section will try to complement the arguments with some facts, by carrying out a “simple accounting exercise” to evaluate how many and what types of workers would be most affected by a hypothetical coordination of minimum wage policy in the different countries, using a baseline scenario of a single national wage floor of 60% of the median national wages and drawing from the two most recent EU-wide data sources on wages and income. Eurofound was established in 1975 with the mandate of contributing with knowledge to the planning and design of better living and working conditions in Europe. We hope that this report can at least contribute to the debate

New Tasks in Old Jobs: Drivers of Change and Implications for Job Quality

This overview report summarises the findings of 20 case studies looking at recent changes in the task content of five manufacturing occupations (car assemblers, meat processing workers, hand-packers, chemical products plant and machine operators and inspection engineers) as a result of factors such as digital transformations, globalisation and offshoring, increasing demand for high quality standards and sustainability. It also discusses some implications in terms of job quality and working life. The study reveals that the importance of physical tasks in manufacturing is generally declining due to automation; that more intensive use of digitally controlled equipment, together with increasing importance of quality standards, involve instead a growing amount of intellectual tasks for manual industrial workers; and that the amount of routine task content is still high in the four manual occupations studied. Overall, the report highlights how qualitative contextual information can complement existing quantitative data, offering a richer understanding of changes in the content and nature of jobs

Una aproximación sociológica al fenómeno del software libre

In recent years, an anti-commercial altemative to the software industry has emerged, targeting specifically its system of copyright and of market based production and distribution. In this paper, an attempt is made to explain sociologically the reasons for the remarkable success of what is known as Free Software. The proposed explanation is based on the analysis of the origins and the development of this altemative. The main idea is that the success of Free Software is due to the confluence of three factors: an ideologic factor (the power struggles in the field of software development), a technological factor (the productive potential of using the Internet) and an economic factor (power struggles in the software and hardware markets).En los últimos años ha surgido en el mundo de la informática una alternativa desmercantilizada (conocida como Software Libré) al sistema de propiedad intelectual y de mercado de programas informáticos que está consiguiendo un importante y sorprendente éxito. En este trabajo se trata de explicar las causas de este éxito desde una perspectiva sociológica. El modelo propuesto, construido a través de un análisis del origen y desarrollo de esta alternativa, está basado en la idea de que el éxito del fenómeno estudiado se debe a la confluencia de tres factores: un factor ideológico-social (las luchas de poder en el campo de los informáticos), un factor tecnológico (las potencialidades productivas del uso de Internet) y un factor económico (las luchas de poder en el mercado informático)

Employment transitions and occupational mobility in Europe. The impact of the great recession

This study investigates employment and occupational mobility in Europe before and after the 2008 financial crisis, with the aim of linking individual-level employment transitions to the broad labour market developments during the crisis, such as the surge in unemployment and the phenomenon of job polarisation. The analysis compares six European countries that represent different institutional clusters – France, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the UK. It tracks the transitions of their working age populations into and out of inactivity, unemployment and employment (in five wage categories). The study seeks to better understand what happened to workers who lost their jobs during the recession, beyond the headline unemployment statistics. Did they find other work and, if so, was it better or worse paid? Were opportunities for upward occupational mobility affected by the crisis? The findings show that the countries studied fall into three distinct categories based on the degree of occupational mobility characterising their economiesEste estudio investiga el empleo y la movilidad ocupacional en Europa antes y después de la crisis financiera de 2008, con el objetivo de vincular las transiciones del empleo a nivel individual con la evolución general del mercado laboral durante la crisis, como el aumento del desempleo y el fenómeno de la polarización del empleo. El análisis compara seis países europeos que representan diferentes grupos institucionales: Francia, Italia, Polonia, España, Suecia y el Reino Unido. Hace un seguimiento de las transiciones de sus poblaciones en edad de trabajar hacia y desde la inactividad, el desempleo y el empleo (en cinco categorías salariales). El estudio pretende comprender mejor qué les sucedió a los trabajadores que perdieron sus empleos durante la recesión, más allá de las estadísticas de desempleo principales. ¿Encontraron otro trabajo y, de ser así, se les paga mejor o peor? ¿Se vieron afectadas por la crisis las oportunidades de movilidad profesional ascendente? Los resultados muestran que los países estudiados se dividen en tres categorías distintas en función del grado de movilidad profesional que caracteriza a sus economía

Occupations and the recent trends in wage inequality in Europe

We aim to contribute to a better understanding of the role that occupations played in recent trends in wage inequality in some European countries. Using EU-SILC data, we observe that most of the changes in wage inequality between 2005 and 2014 were the result of changes in the distribution of wages within occupations. A longer term approximation using data from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) shows similar patterns. We conclude that occupational dynamics did not drive recent trends in wage inequality in Europe

Un modelo 1D NPZ de acoplamiento entre la hidrodinámica y los flujos biogeoquímicos en estrechos bicapa. Aplicación a la dinámica mareal en el Estrecho de Gibraltar

Los modelos NPZ (siglas para Nutrientes-Fitoplancton-Zooplancton en inglés) son comúnmente utilizados en estudios de biología marina. Este tipo de modelos utiliza un conjunto de ecuaciones diferenciales muy sencillo para definir la dinámica del plancton marino. Las variables de estado de las cuales se modeliza su evolución son los nutrientes, el fitoplancton y el zooplankton, esto se hace en términos de su contenido de nitrógeno, ya que este compuesto el que normalmente limita la producción primaria en el océano. En este trabajo se implementa el acoplado de un modelo NPZ para el modelado de los flujos biogeoquímicos con un modelo de aguas poco profundas bicapa para la hidrodinámica. El objetivo es aplicar este modelo a la simulación de flujos biogeoquímicos en el Estrecho de Gibraltar con imposición de la dinámica mareal.1) Proyecto DAIFLUID. Plan Nacional MTM2012-38383-C02-01. 2) Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec

Wage differentials and segmentation: The impact of institutions and changing economic conditions.

This paper uses data from the European Survey on Income and Living Conditions to offer new empirical evidence on how wage differentials are influenced by the changing economic conditions, that is, before and after the 2008–2010 recession, and shaped by the different institutional frameworks of European Union countries. We examine whether wage changes are homogeneous across groups of workers, as they are classified by their contractual relationship and working time, and by the heterogeneity in institutions that regulate and affect the labour market. Results obtained by estimating ordinary least squares and quantile regressions confirm the existence of contract and working time wage gaps and allow to estimate their different magnitudes along the wage distribution, and their rise during the recession. The impact of labour market institutions on shaping them is diverse, with more intervention of the government in the setting of the minimum wage and stricter regulation for atypical contracts reducing the wage gaps and producing larger positive effects for low-wage employees

Morse–Bott theory on posets and a homological Lusternik–Schnirelmann theorem

We develop Morse–Bott theory on posets, generalizing both discrete Morse–Bott theory for regular complexes and Morse theory on posets. Moreover, we prove a Lusternik– Schnirelmann theorem for general matchings on posets, in particular, for Morse–Bott functions