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Two stylised facts of the German labour market are that first, the demand for high-skilled labour has been growing rapidly for a number of years and second, the country is facing a particularly strong demographic change with the expected size of the population decreasing rapidly and the average age of the labour force increasing sharply. This has led to a widely discussed fear of 'labour shortages'. One of the reasons often stated in the public debate is that within a given time period many more old individuals are retiring than young individuals are entering the labour market. Although there is a certain logic in this argument, it is only prima facie convincing because firstly, a change in labour demand could counteract this effect and secondly, it is unclear whether - given labour demand for the occupations people retire from - people retiring from the labour market are normally 'replaced' by young cohorts entering the labour market.

Thirdly, even if the size of a cohort differs between generations, it is by no means clear what the effects on labour supply are as, for example, the participation rates may also differ. [The authors] address these issues from a theoretical and empirical perspective. In the theoretical part [the authors] focus on the relationship between vacancies and unemployment (labour-market tightness) and show that it does not always increase with demographic change. In the empirical part, [the authors] analyse how employment is affected over time by different shares of different age cohorts. [The authors] find no evidence that a higher number of retirees in an occupation leads to a higher demand for younger workers. Instead, to a large extent, retirees seem to be 'replaced', if they are replaced at all, by middle-aged cohorts who change occupations. Thus, [the authors] conclude that the interaction between large retiring cohorts and small entering cohorts within occupations is less direct than is suggested in the public debate.

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The recent and currently fragile economic recovery has not yet been able to create new jobs and the social situation in the [European Union] EU shows little signs of improvement so far. The improved outcomes in the EU labour markets are still at best modest. Employment showed the first signs of stabilising in 2013, with a 0.1 per cent growth in the second half of the year. This analysis also points to an expected increase in poverty levels and a slight improvement in the impact of social protection expenditure in 2013, even if its support effect remains very weak. The situation for households remains serious. The income that households have at their disposal is lagging behind the growth of gross domestic product. It provides also empirical evidence that the crisis at its height had the strongest adverse impact on labour market transitions of men and young people.

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Germany's labor market responded only mildly to the Great Recession. Important factors for this development include the strong economic position due to recent labor market reforms, the crisis affecting mainly export-oriented companies, the extension of short-time work, time buffers due to working time accounts, the behavior of social partners, and automatic stabilizers. We emphasize the important interaction between short-time work and long-term shortages of skilled workers in sectors particularly affected by the crisis. Although Germany's experience is in stark contrast to the United States, we identify and discuss common challenges at the center of the future jobs debate.

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Skilled labor is a key input to the innovation process. A shortage in supply of skilled labor may hence impede innovation activities, resulting in lower productivity gains. While governments are concerned about these likely negative impacts, there is only limited empirical evidence whether and to what extent labor shortage affects innovation activities. The paper addresses this question using panel data from three waves (2017 to 2019) of the German innovation survey. We measure labor shortage by job openings that could not be filled at all, not with the required skills or only with significant delay, distinguishing different skill levels. We analyze whether labor shortage resulted in stopping or abandoning of innovation projects. Endogeneity issues are tackled by instrumental variable estimation techniques. Our results show that innovative firms are more likely to be subject to skill shortage, whereas skill shortage induces the cancelation of innovation projects. Effects are stronger for labor shortage related to professional occupations and less for academic qualifications.

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A shrinking working-age population will be the Russian Federation's biggest demographic challenge in coming decades. With workers increasingly scarce, sustainable future economic development depends on Russia's ability to bring into the labor force currently under-utilized groups, such as young mothers and older people, and to maximize the productivity of every worker. This study assesses the projected dynamics of the working-age population and how changes in labor force participation may affect the future workforce. It also assesses the potential contribution of individual factors to either facilitate or deter the participation of older Russians in the labor force. A review of disincentives for labor force participation in current social insurance programs and labor institutions is followed by policy proposals to help prolong the working lives of older adults.

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This position paper maps the role of immigrant labour in meeting the needs of European child and elderly care and presents policy recommendations along the lines of the socio-ecological transition that could lead to more dignified and fair conditions for carrying out care work. National welfare regimes in Europe increasingly rely on immigrant care workers and, in the context of European immigration care chains, different mixtures of state- and market-based policies shape national care regimes and sustain and reproduce inherent inequalities of care chains. The paper summarises the main results of the related working paper on two transnational care chains formed by four [European Union] EU member states (Italy, Poland, Romania and the United Kingdom) and Ukraine. It indicates that across the EU, the care sector lacks the structural reform that would transform it into a sector of dignified work and carrier opportunities. [The authors'] major finding is that national policies are typically shaped along the line of least resistance, ignoring raising demand for care, continuing the structural shrinkage of formal care and turning to monetary subsidies and relying on cheap immigrant labour. This reflects fiscal and market pressures rather than a long-term strategic approach towards employment in the care sector along the lines of the socio-ecological transition, such as reducing gender inequalities or opening up the sector for vulnerable groups. In the emerging state-market mix, the key feature of state policies is the aim of regulating migration flows that supply market demand for cheap care labour.

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The national report on Austria evaluates the policies and instruments applicable to labour migration in Austria. Chapter two provides an initial overview of national policies and of current debates on the issue in public and political circles, and evaluates whether labour migration policies are linked to identified labour shortages, and if so in what way. Chapter three investigates the mechanisms used to identify any labour shortage and the need for labour migration. The items described in detail include the process for defining lists of shortage occupations and the role played by such lists. A special focus in this regard will be the role of the social partners. This is followed by a presentation of the results of applying those instruments, i.e. the current labour shortage and need for labour migration in Austria. Chapter four then discusses measures for monitoring Austrian labour migration policy with a view to reducing the labour shortage. The final section of the study, Chapter five, completes the report with some conclusions based on the foregoing findings.

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Many [European Union] EU countries are currently undergoing major demographic changes, particularly in terms of shrinking total and working-age populations and population ageing. If this trend is to continue, the functioning of the labour market is at risk as labour shortages are increasingly more likely to emerge which will subsequently imperil further economic growth and catching-up across the EU. This report addresses the likely labour-market consequences of observable demographic trends in the EU. It applies a simple trend-based model which uses observable trends of the past 15 years of the working-age population and the activity rate - which together determine the evolution of the supply of labour - as well as of labour productivity and [gross domestic product] GDP growth - which together determine the evolution of the demand for labour - to simulate likely scenarios for the future development of labour supply and demand until 2050. Projected future trends in both labour supply and demand are then used to establish whether and - if so - in what year adverse past demographic developments are likely to kick in and begin jeopardising further growth. Different simulation exercises demonstrate that in some EU countries - particularly countries in Central and Eastern Europe - labour supply-side constraints would already materialise in the mid-2020s, which calls for quick policy action to address and ideally avert the imminent demographic collapse.

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In the wake of the vote to leave the European Union it seems likely that the UK will adopt a new immigration regime, moving away from the current free movement of people within the EU and possibly extending the current points-based-system that applies to those outside the European Union. Given the government's promise to bring net migration down it is fair to assume that the new regime will place greater restrictions on immigration. The numbers of migrants entering the country grew significantly over the last decade. As this coincided with stagnant and then falling earnings it is fair to assess how far migration contributed to this. This note finds that while it is wrong to say that migration had no effect in reducing earnings, specifically for those in low-paying occupations, the effects are small and reducing migration will not reverse the earnings squeeze.

However, reduced migration will throw up a number of significant new challenges for the labour market. In the short-term the government will need to ensure that the right to work of existing migrants is guaranteed to avoid serious harm being done to some sectors heavily reliant on such labour. In the medium-term its much heralded new industrial strategy will need to focus on helping these industries adjust to lower migrant availability, for example by investing in labour saving technology. Finally, with a likely rise in temporary workers and a greater risk of illegal migration the government will need to rethink the UK's current light touch approach to labour market enforcement.

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Theoretical arguments and previous country-level evidence indicate that immigrants are more fluid than natives in responding to changing labor shortages across countries, skill-groups or industries. The diversity across [European Union] EU member states enables [the authors] to test this hypothesis across various institutional, economic and policy contexts. Drawing on the [European Union Labour Force Survey] EU LFS and [European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions] EU SILC datasets [the authors] study the relationship between residual wage premia as a measure of labor shortages in different skill-industry-country cells and the shares of migrants and natives working in these cells. [The authors] find that immigrants' responsiveness to labor market shortages exceeds that of natives in the [European Union 15] EU15, in particular in member states with higher unemployment rates, higher levels of (recent) immigration, and more open immigration and integration policies; but also those with barriers to citizenship acquisition or family reunification. Whereas higher welfare expenditures seem to exert a lock-in effect, a comparison across different types of welfare states indicates that institutional complementarities neutralize that effect.

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