The student workforce plays a substantial part in several low-paying industries such as retail and hospitality, and this has grown over time. However, there has been little recent research. The usual assumption is that students compete successfully with the local labour force for low-skill, part-time jobs, but there is little evidence for this.…

Claims that low-skilled young people, and especially the men among them, are being excluded from the labour market have been influential over recent decades, contributing to an increasing concern over the issue of early school leaving. In this study, we use high-quality administrative data and sequence analysis to investigate the school-to-work…

We present new evidence on the pandemic's effects on youth, for the first time focusing on perceived effects on the learning of job skills, as well as on education. The context is post-Brexit Britain. We find that 47% of young people in a representative sample perceive a loss of learning of job skills, while a sizeable minority (17%) judge that…

This study analyses the participation of low-skilled employees in employer-provided training and examines the mechanisms that encourage the training participation of low-skilled employees. Building on theoretical considerations of human capital theory and the task-based approach, we seek to show that job tasks play an important role in explaining…

This paper contributes to debates around social mobility and social capital by exploring the links between social class background, assistance from non-parental personal contacts for finding employment, and social class destination. The literature on social mobility, social capital and social networks is reviewed, drawing a conceptual distinction…

De-industrialisation and the development of the "service economy" have had a profound impact on the nature of work and employment in contemporary Britain. Theories of post- and reflexive modernity argue that individuals are able to reflexively reconstruct their identities in line with new social and workplace requirements. Yet,…

Comparison of national policies in South Korea, Singapore, and Britain to respond to low-skills equilibria (self-reinforcing institutions that stifle demand for skill improvements) shows that different responses stem from national differences in supply/demand and the differential impact of globalization due to the individual economic and social…

This article presents a critique of the 'high skills' argument which, in the international literature, presents a high skill strategy as an adjunct and necessary condition for the successful expansion of human resources development (HRD) alongside social market institutions and 'joined up' policy. For a developing country such as South Africa,…