Becoming Too Small to Bail? Prospects for Workers in the 2011 Economy and 112th Congress

Labor and Employment Law Under the Obama Administration: A Time for Hope and Change? Symposium held November 12-13, 2010, Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Bloomington, Indian

The Economics of Flexible Work Arrangements

A presentation on the economics of Flexible Work Arrangements: OVERVIEW: FWA’s, Inflexibility and Salaried Workers and Effects on Work-Family by Lonnie Golden, PhD, Pennsylvania State University - Abington on behalf of Workplace Flexibility 2010

The Augmented Labor Supply Function: Worktime Evidence from Japan

Labor Supply

What Do We Know About Contracting Out in the United States? Evidence from Household and Establishment Surveys

A variety of evidence points to significant growth in domestic contracting out over the last two decades, yet the phenomenon is not well documented. In this paper, we pull together data from various sources to shed light on the extent of and trends in domestic outsourcing, the occupations in which it has grown, and the industries engaging in outsourcing for the employment services sector, which has been a particularly important area of domestic outsourcing. In addition, we examine evidence of contracting out of selected occupations to other sectors. We point to many gaps in our knowledge on trends in domestic outsourcing and its implications for employment patterns and to inconsistencies across data sets in the information that is available. We recommend steps to improve data in this area

The Ups and Downs in Women's Employment: Shifting Composition or Behavior from 1970 to 2010?

This paper tracks factors contributing to the ups and downs in women’s employment from 1970 to 2010 using regression decompositions focusing on whether changes are due to shifts in the means (composition of women) or due to shifts in coefficients (inclinations of women to work for pay). Compositional shifts in education exerted a positive effect on women’s employment across all decades, while shifts in the composition of other family income, particularly at the highest deciles, depressed married women’s employment over the 1990s contributing to the slowdown in this decade. A positive coefficient effect of education was found in all decades, except the 1990s, when the effect was negative, depressing women’s employment. Further, positive coefficient results for other family income at the highest deciles bolstered married women’s employment over the 1990s. Models are run separately for married and single women demonstrating the varying results of other family income by marital status. This research was supported in part by an Upjohn Institute Early Career Research Award

A Purpose for Every Time: The Timing and Length of the Work Week and Implications for Worker Well-Being Symposium: Redefining Work: Implications of the Four-Day Work Week - Reduced/Compressed Work Weeks: Who Wins: Who Loses

Would replacing the conventional work week with a four-day option benefit economic performance and well-being? In the framework of economics, the question is whether work week reform can make some individuals better off without making other individuals worse off in ways that do not hamper other goals such as efficiency, economic growth, and equity. Social and individual welfare outcomes would depend on whether reforming the work week involves shortening the length of the work day versus rearranging the timing of work. The “public good” case for a policy that induces shorter hours of work per employee is a logical extension from evidence of the adverse effects stemming from excessively long hours of work on workers’ stress, work/life balance, and productivity per hour. A shorter work week may improve workers’ well-being if it creates more total employment opportunities; allows more free time to be used at employees’ discretion and gives them greater control over work; is accompanied by partial income replacement under certain states’ “work-sharing” programs; and is well targeted toward workers who prefer shorter hours than they are currently working. Given the heterogeneity of work hour preferences by stage of life-cycle, the most promising Fair Labor Standards Act reform proposals, from an individualistic standpoint, would be those ensuring that employers consider individual employee requests for flexibility in the number of hours or the times when the employee is required to work per day or per week

A Purpose for Every Time: The Timing and Length of the Work Week and Implications for Worker Well-Being Symposium: Redefining Work: Implications of the Four-Day Work Week - Reduced/Compressed Work Weeks: Who Wins: Who Loses

Would replacing the conventional work week with a four-day option benefit economic performance and well-being? In the framework of economics, the question is whether work week reform can make some individuals better off without making other individuals worse off in ways that do not hamper other goals such as efficiency, economic growth, and equity. Social and individual welfare outcomes would depend on whether reforming the work week involves shortening the length of the work day versus rearranging the timing of work. The “public good” case for a policy that induces shorter hours of work per employee is a logical extension from evidence of the adverse effects stemming from excessively long hours of work on workers’ stress, work/life balance, and productivity per hour. A shorter work week may improve workers’ well-being if it creates more total employment opportunities; allows more free time to be used at employees’ discretion and gives them greater control over work; is accompanied by partial income replacement under certain states’ “work-sharing” programs; and is well targeted toward workers who prefer shorter hours than they are currently working. Given the heterogeneity of work hour preferences by stage of life-cycle, the most promising Fair Labor Standards Act reform proposals, from an individualistic standpoint, would be those ensuring that employers consider individual employee requests for flexibility in the number of hours or the times when the employee is required to work per day or per week

Hours vs. Employment: The Determinants of Labor Market Adjustment Since The Great Depression

225 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1985.This thesis empirically investigates the determinants of three forms of quantity-side adjustment in the labor market--weekly hours, employment, and layoffs. We primarily focus on the role played by unionization and some of the non-wage labor costs that have become a quasi-fixed cost of employment. Although the effects of unionization and fixed employment costs have been researched previously, we analyze their potential effects in a time-series setting using monthly data from 1929-1982. We also explore the historical setting which gave rise to the spurt in unionization and development of employer-funded social insurance programs.A regression model is constructed and estimated for all three forms of labor input adjustment. The model controls for the effect of output demand levels and of occupational structure. We include interaction terms for unionization and quasi-fixed employment costs. Their inclusion allows us to analyze the union and fixed employment cost effect at three different points in the business cycle--their "total effect" in an average period, and two "cyclical effects" in a typical expansionary or contractionary period.The impact of fixed employment costs, such as contributions to social insurance funds, is to raise weekly hours and layoffs, and reduce employment levels--a clearly unintended effect of private and social insurance programs. The impact of unionization supports the exit-voice approach's prediction that unions actually encourage layoffs, although the assumed unions preference for layoffs subsides somewhat during relatively poor economic times. Unions are also found to reduce the flexibility of the work-week over the cycle.The implications for policy are that the extent of unemployment due to layoffs can be reduced through measures that would make social insurance contributions a strictly variable labor cost and those that would induce unions to favor work-sharing over layoffs.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD