The COVID-19 pandemic brought unprecedented economic and policy challenges to the United States and other countries. Navigating out of the pandemic slowdown is another novel experience, which makes it more difficult to answer the question addressed each year in the "State of Working Pennsylvania": How is the Pennsylvania economy…

The United States and Pennsylvania economies are at a pivot point: Will we build forward better or will we build back the same? Will we make things even worse? This report revisits the policy choices that lie ahead. Most of this annual checkup on the Pennsylvania economy, the 26th "State of Working Pennsylvania," presents labor market…

Panama has achieved socio-economic improvements in recent decades thanks to strong economic growth and consequent poverty reduction. Its growth model is characterised by a dual economy in which a small number of activities, including those related to the Canal and Special Economic Zones, have exhibited high productivity growth but limited job…

The European labour market is challenged by changes in the demographic composition of the labour force and increasing work complexities and processes. Skills forecasting makes useful contribution to decisions by policy-makers, experts and individuals. In this publication, Cedefop presents the latest results of skills supply and demand forecasts.…

Individual variation in labor supply can arise from more than just a choice among discrete occupation groups, especially given the joint process of wage determination and time allocation. Other factors can include differential preferences for earnings, the time length of work and other related occupational attributes. Using data from the Wisconsin…

The authors use data from the Health and Retirement Study's Earnings Benefit File, which links Health and Retirement Study to Social Security Administration records, to estimate the impact of childhood health on earnings curves between the ages of 25 and 50 years. They also investigate the extent to which diminished educational attainment, earlier…

According to Sheldon Danziger and David Ratner, changes in the labor market over the past thirty-five years, such as labor-saving technological changes, increased globalization, declining unionization, and the failure of the minimum wage to keep up with inflation, have made it more difficult for young adults to attain the economic stability and…

This working paper assesses the ease of immigrants' integration in OECD labour markets by estimating how an immigration background influences the probability of being active or employed and the expected hourly earnings, for given individual characteristics. Applying the same methodology to comparable data across twelve OECD countries, immigrants…

Nine articles discuss the effect of economic and social upheaval on employment and wages in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, the USSR, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. (SK)

This Congressional report contains the testimony given at a hearing pertaining to passage of the Youth Employment Opportunity Wage Act of 1985. (The act, which would terminate in September 1987, would authorize an employer to pay a subminimum, "youth employment opportunity wage" to a person under 20 years of age.) Included among those…

Policy options for increasing the earnings of the young welfare recipients were explored by analyzing the incomes of nearly 12,000 young women in Baltimore, Maryland, whose 19th birthday fell between April 1, 1985, and March 31, 1989, and who had at least one spell of welfare dependency between their 19th and 29th birthdays. An analysis of the…

Sustainable growth has economic policies addressed to current imbalances as its necessary, though not its sufficient, condition. Labor markets are important for the growth process; as the level of economic activity increases, they function better, and as they function better, the level of economic activity increases further. Labor market…

The potential effects of raising the minimum wage on the earnings of mothers moving from welfare to work were examined by analyzing the differences that existed in the late 1980s in the various states' minimum wage rates and data from three waves of the Survey of Income and Program Participation for the years 1985-1990 (during which time 13 states…

Despite concerns that globalization will increase unemployment and wage inequality, drive down wages and labor standards, and threaten national policy autonomy, it is clear that national policies still determine employment levels and labor standards. However, the need to protect those damaged by globalization still exists. (SK)

In contrast to other East Asian countries, in Papua New Guinea the economy is stagnating due to high labor costs, overvalued currency, stagnant productivity, high government consumption, and barriers to external and internal investment and exports. (SK)