Statistical evidence from 58 countries shows that although people in rural areas are more likely to be in employment than those in urban ones, they also tend to have jobs that can put them at risk of experiencing inadequate labour protection as well as low pay. In particular, rural workers are...

This paper discusses the potential introduction of permanent public subsidies to supplement the wages of low-paid workers in Italy, taking inspiration from Edmund Phelps' ideas on supporting the working poor. We consider how a negative taxation scheme for low-wage earners might address...

The integration of active labour market policies within income support schemes - such as unemployment insurance and social assistance - has been a key component of social protection in high-income countries since the 1990s, with a rich literature reviewing its effects and implementation...

Statistical evidence from 58 countries shows that although people in rural areas are more likely to be in employment than those in urban ones, they also tend to have jobs that can put them at risk of experiencing inadequate labour protection as well as low pay. In particular, rural workers are...

Non-take-up of welfare schemes is a key concern of policy effectiveness. Building on studies that have shown the low take-up of minimum income schemes, our case study of Ireland's Working Family Payment is the first to analyse non-take-up of an in-work benefit and its determinants with a special...

In April 2016, a National Living Wage replaced the National Minimum Wage for employees in the UK aged 25 and above, raising their statutory wage floor by 50 pence per hour. This uprating was almost double any in the previous decade and expanded the share of jobs covered by the wage floor by...

Thanks to standardized work protocol and technology of McDonald's restaurants, the hourly wage of McDonald's Basic Crew enables wage comparisons under near-identical skill inputs and hedonic job conditions. McWages capture labor costs in entry-level jobs, while the Big Macs (earned) Per Hour...

We use administrative tax data to estimate the effect of the Working Income Tax Benefit (WITB) on the labour supply of single, low-income workers in Canada. Our analytical approach exploits low knowledge of the program, which has two important implications for our research design and...

This research note offers a comprehensive view of low-wage employment. It investigates the nature and extent of low-pay persistence in European countries, using longitudinal data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) spanning 2004 to 2019. The study focuses...

We gratefully acknowledge funding from ADR UK (Administrative Data Research UK) and the Economic and Social Research Council (Grant No. ES/T013877/1). The work is based on analysis of the research-ready datasets from the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) (ONS, 2024a), Business Structure...

We investigate the impact of Seattle's Paid Sick and Safety Time (PSST) policy on workers' quarterly hours worked and separation hazard. Using Unemployment Insurance records from before and after the implementation of PSST, we examine individual-level employment behavior at the extensive and...

The permanent restructuring of the economy, exacerbated by the digital transition and combined with labour market dualization, is progressively increasing semi- and low-skilled workers' risk of marginalization. This article analyses how countries balance employment and equality concerns in core...

In this pilot project, Eurofound successfully established the feasibility of, and piloted, an EU-wide database of minimum pay rates contained in collective agreements related to low-paid workers. A conceptual and measurement framework was devised, a total of 692 collective agreements - related...

We examine how migrant workers impact firm performance using administrative data from the United States. Exploiting an unexpected change in firms' likelihood of securing low-wage workers through the H-2B visa program, we find limited crowd-out of other forms of employment and no impact on...

The Working Yet Poor project (hereinafter: Work YP) focuses on the rising trend of people working but not being able to afford a decent standard of living above the at-risk-of-poverty line. In 2019, almost one in ten workers in the European Union (hereinafter: EU) was considered at risk of...

We examine how migrant workers impact firm performance using administrative data from the United States. Exploiting an unexpected change in firms' likelihood of securing low-wage workers through the H-2B visa program, we find limited crowd-out of other forms of employment and no impact on...

In-work poverty (IWP) is gaining interest in the public agenda. This article is a first contribution to the analysis of IWP dynamics in Latin America, based on the study of the Argentine case. Using one-year interval panel data, the paper analyzes the trigger events that produce entries and...

This paper investigates how the evolution of local labour market structure enables or constrains workers as regards escaping low-wage jobs. Drawing on the network-based approach of evolutionary economic geography, we employ a detailed individual-level panel dataset to construct skill-relatedness...

We examine how migrant workers impact firm performance using administrative data from the United States. Exploiting an unexpected change in firms' likelihood of securing low-wage workers through the H-2B visa program, we find limited crowd-out of other forms of employment and no impact on...

Labor market tightness following the height of the Covid-19 pandemic led to an unexpected compression in the US wage distribution that reflects, in part, an increase in labor market competition. Rapid relative wage growth at the bottom of the distribution reduced the college wage premium and...

Britain is among the countries in Europe which has seen the highest growth of in-work poverty, resulting in 17% of all working households now considered working poor, compared to 13% in 1996. The purpose of this paper is to examine what has contributed to the rise of in-work poverty in Britain,...

The labour market position of the lower skilled is increasingly under pressure in most high income countries. Their bargaining position is declining under the twin pressures of globalisation and technological change; and they are at risk of losing access to better positions as firms’ pay and...