Five major challenges facing vocational education are (1) the changing demographic composition of the United States; (2) the shift from a manufacturing to a service economy and decline in productivity; (3) composition of the labor force; (4) reform of preparation for work; and (5) the politics of race. (SK)

A study used data from the National Longitudinal Survey of 5,083 women who were thirty to forty-four years old in 1967 to investigate factors relating to the determination of the asking wage. Among the findings of the study was that unemployed women substantially reduce their reservation wages as the period of unemployment progresses. Findings…

Studies indicate that the workforce in 2000 will be characterized by a culturally diverse population composed of an increasing number of women and minorities. U.S. businesses are beginning to realize the challenges they face to recruit and manage the trained workforce they will need in the future. (Author/JOW)

With intense competition at the forefront of the global knowledge-based economy, the United States must embrace a strategy of building a skilled workforce. In the New Economy, the flow of capital coalesces around regions that have high concentrations of talent. Despite evidence that skilled workers are a vital element of regional economic…

Against a background of declining employment in agriculture, a mobile workforce plays a crucial role in meeting seasonal labour demand in Australia. The dynamics of this labour force have received surprisingly little attention. We situate seasonal migration within the rising diversity of present-day mobility, and capture images of its early…

The main hypothesis here is that the notion of economic and social development has been misconceived by most stakeholders in matters of development. This misconception is the main cause of underdevelopment in Kenya, which leads to all the reasons most authors and commentators have given to explain Kenya's situation. Therefore, it is only possible…

This study concludes that older workers do not have especially high unemployment rates, but when they become unemployed, they are less likely to find a job and more likely to leave the labor force in discouragement. (Author/SSH)

Any audience of women contains a much higher percentage of those who consider themselves to be working women than the statistics indicate. Marketers who adhere to simplistic definitions of working women risk making mistakes in the placement of their ads and in the images of women in their messages. (JOW)

Presents guidelines for starting a training department including reasons why corporations decide to establish one. Includes examples from many companies. (JOW)

The key to economic and social development lies in the knowledge and skill base of human capital. This report, presented to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance, calls for vigorous action on the part of the Government of Canada, in concert with the provinces and territories, to protect the Canadian economy from a skills shortage…

Changing conditions in the workplace and the impact of these changes on the individual worker are examined in this paper, which also discusses the implications of these changes for education and training. Major workplace trends likely to continue through the year 2000 include changes in work force demographics, in the industry mix, and in the…

This article discusses the difficulties involved in obtaining accurate labor force data for Third World women, from the point of view of interviewers, respondents, and labor statisticians or economists. Suggestions are then made regarding alternative definitions of the labor force and survey questionnaire structures in order to overcome some of…

Approximately two-thirds of the population depends on one-third of the population for survival. The valiant 77 million constitute the full-time work force in the United States. The conflict between excellence and equality weakens the development of a maximally productive work force. (JN)

Qualitative researchers in human resource development (HRD) frequently use in-depth interviews as a research method. Yet reports from qualitative studies in HRD commonly pay little or no analytical attention to the co-construction of interview data. That is, reports of qualitative research projects often treat interviews as a transparent method of…

Report on the conference on information workers held as part of the White House Conference on Productivity covers statistics on the information work force and findings and recommendations from the conference on productivity within bureaucracies, e.g., productivity measures for determining wage increases and formal price systems. (EJS)