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Amidst slowing economic growth, global labour markets have shown resilience in 2023. Global unemployment has dropped to the lowest level since the outbreak of the [COVID-19] pandemic and labour force participation has recovered in most regions. Despite these positive headline indicators, fragility has emerged in working conditions, and a cost-of-living crisis has arisen from fast-rising energy and food prices. Employment growth in 2024 is projected to falter even though global unemployment will remain broadly unchanged. Major decent work deficits, which to a large degree predate the pandemic, are set to persist under these conditions - especially gender participation gaps, working poverty, and informality.

This [report] provides a comprehensive assessment of labour imbalances that arose with the recovery from the pandemic and exist alongside persistent decent work deficits. It analyses global patterns, regional differences, and outcomes across groups of workers. The report also offers labour market projections for 2024 and 2025. Finally, it presents trends in labour force participation, hours worked and employment growth and analyses their contributions to labour market imbalances.

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This paper surveys issues associated with the minimum wage and its economic impacts in Japan. First, I discuss how the minimum wage is discussed in recent political debates. Next, I explain economic factors surrounding the Japanese labor market that are related to the minimum wage: specifically, I take up the issues of globalization and 'mismatch' (i.e. a labor shortage exists in some industries and/or occupations and, at the same time, there is unemployment). Then I provide an overview of facts regarding the minimum wage for the past two decades. Finally, I critically review recent empirical studies that examine the employment effects of the minimum wage (Tachibanaki and Urakawa 2007; Kambayashi, Kawaguchi, and Yamada 2009).

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A key feature of the Danish labour market is its so-called flexicurity, the coexistence of flexibility (low adjustment costs for both employers and employees) and security (owing to a developed social safety net with high coverage and high replacement ratios). This is often believed to have contributed to the resilience of the Danish labour market and especially to its ability to maintain a low and stable unemployment rate. The aim of this paper is to examine the performance of the flexicurity system and changes therein during the previous three decades, including the first years of the Great Recession. We carry out two types of analyses: at the levels of establishments and employees, respectively. First, we use linked employer-employee data for the private sector to examine how labour demand responds to output shocks by a study of firms' labour adjustment behaviour during economic upturns and downturns. Second, based on the same data set we examine how the flexicurity system protects workers from income losses associated with job losses due to plant closures or major lay-offs. In particular, we are interested in how the transformation of the flexicurity system since the mid-90s to increasingly emphasise activation and to reduce maximum unemployment benefit durations has changed employees' security in case of displacement. We document large worker flows that exhibit strong cyclical variation giving rise to volatile unemployment dynamics. External flexibility of firms has remained unchanged for almost three decades. While we find no clear traces of trend changes in employers' labour adjustment behaviour, we do find that income losses of displaced workers have declined over time, mainly due to their faster re-employment. Although it is still early days to conclude with certainty, there are so far no strong indications of the reemergence of unemployment hysteresis to the same extent as in previous recessions.

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This discussion paper undertakes projections and analysis of the potential role of immigration in meeting future labour force needs to inform government consideration of future settings of Australia's temporary and permanent migration programs.

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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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In 2020, StudyPerth commissioned ACIL Allen to quantify the economic importance of international education to the [Western Australian] WA economy [available in VOCEDplus at TD/TNC 147.715]. It was estimated that in 2019, the 53,404 international student enrolments in Western Australia boosted the State's Gross State Product by $2.1 billion and supported almost 12,000 direct and indirect [full time equivalent] FTE jobs across Western Australia. Since the completion of this study in April 2020, the international education sector has been hit hard by the [Coronavirus Disease 2019] COVID-19 pandemic, as governments around the world closed their borders to protect the health and wellbeing of their citizens. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated travel restrictions has continued into 2021, with a timeline for the return of international students to Western Australia remaining unclear.

In light of the significant impact that the COVID-19 pandemic and associated travel restrictions has had on the international education sector since early 2020, StudyPerth engaged ACIL Allen to estimate the economic contribution of the international education sector in 2020, and compare this with the 2019 results. In addition, StudyPerth has sought to understand the economic outlook for the international education sector based on an assumed path back to pre-COVID-19 student numbers in Western Australia. As a result, in this study ACIL Allen has completed an additional two modelling tasks. First, ACIL Allen has run an additional four simulations of its [input-output] I-O model on the projected economic impacts of the international students in WA based on the forecast international student numbers in 2021 and 2022. Second, in order to determine the economy-wide implications of labour shortages arising from a reduction in international student numbers, ACIL Allen applied its Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model, Tasman Global, to dynamically pick up the impacts of labour market constraints on sectors of the economy that typically source international students for part-time work.

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Rural regions in Australia have been, and continue to be, distinguished by very different population and labour market characteristics than those of more urbanised areas. Since the 1980s, rural regions have been exposed to a range of economic events and policies which has impacted on the structure and composition of the population and the labour force. These changes include trade liberalisation and globalisation, deregulation, declining numbers of agricultural establishments, advances in technology, increases in productivity and changes in the levels of public and private provision of goods and services. In addition, in recent years, serious shortages of labour, particularly skilled labour, has emerged as a major issue facing rural regions.

However, there has been little economic research into rural labour markets relative to other labour markets, particularly since the 1980s. While there has been significant public discussion and political debate in recent years on the apparent changes experienced by rural regions, evidence regarding the nature, causes and impacts of these changes has often been anecdotal. For example, there is the popular notion of the 'tree change' which refers to the idea that people are leaving metropolitan areas and moving to rural areas. Concurrently, there is also the significant discussion on the 'rural downturn', which refers to the belief that rural regions are declining in term of population and employment growth. Further, the agricultural sector has continued to be cited as the likely cause for downturns in rural population and employment growth rates in rural areas. However, again, there is a lack of economic research to substantiate these claims.

The aim of this thesis is to redress the lack of economic research and to provide a comprehensive analysis of rural labour markets and population in Australia since the 1980s. Analysis focuses on the changing structure and composition of rural labour markets and the impact of population shifts on rural localities. Evidence is provided on the extent to which two decades of significant structural, technological and regulatory change have impacted on rural labour markets in Australia. This then provides a sound basis for the policy discussion in this thesis on population and labour market changes in rural Australia and the causes and implications of these changes.

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This publication contributes to better understanding of vocational education and training (VET) in Sweden and how it operates within the socioeconomic context. In Sweden, learners can follow upper secondary initial VET programmes in school-based form or as an apprenticeship, achieving a qualification at [European Qualifications Framework] EQF level 4. At higher VET, 1- to 2-year and 2- to 3-year VET programmes are offered at EQF levels 5 and 6.

The employment rate of VET graduates is higher than the EU-27 average, but the share of initial VET learners in total upper secondary education is quite low (35.6 per cent). The country has above 34 per cent participation in lifelong learning, the highest among the EU-27 Member States. Lack of teachers, ICT specialists and the skills mismatch between labour market needs and graduate qualifications are current challenges for the country. To increase the attractiveness of VET, several measures were launched, such as facilitating progression to higher education.

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The chapters are: (1) External factors influencing VET; (2) VET provision; (3) Shaping VET qualifications; and (4) Promoting VET participation. Show less

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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In 2007 the Department of Education and Training, in partnership with the Goldfields-Esperance Workforce Development Alliance (GEWDA), commissioned The University of Western Australia to undertake research and prepare a strategic workforce plan for the Goldfields-Esperance region. The overall aim of the research was to develop a regional analysis of current and future employment demand, and develop strategies to ensure that this demand could be met. From the research, the background report entitled 'Workforce Futures for the Goldfields-Esperance Region' was produced, incorporating the Goldfields-Esperance Workforce Plan. The development of the plan is a response to serious labour shortages across a range of sectors and occupational groups that threaten to constrain economic growth and prevent the region meeting its full potential. This document provides a summary of the background report. This document also includes the Goldfields-Esperance Workforce Plan. For detailed information on the research, the methods used, or the findings, please see the background report available at stb.wa.gov.au.

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