Why is Europe's employment rate almost 10 percent lower than that of the United States? This "jobs gap" has typically been blamed on the rigidity of European labor markets. But in Services and Employment, an international group of leading labor economists suggests quite a different explanation....

The deteriorating labour market position of low‐skilled workers challenges economic efficiency and social equity. Four aspects are examined: joblessness among the low‐skilled; the prevalence of low pay among women; persistence in low pay; and the overlap between low pay and household poverty....

Using a large panel of employees from the New Earnings Survey, examines the subsequent earnings transitions of those who were in the lowest quintile of the earnings distribution in 1976. Traces the quintile earnings positions in 1984 and 1991 of three age groups of 1976 – the young, the...

This paper analyses the problem of the urban poor in India from a primarily macro-economic perspective, tracing the origins of their economic status to their low share in the factor earnings generated in individual industries. A macro-economic model then simulates the implications for them of a...

Part-time work among British women is extensive, and the (raw) pay penalty large. Since part-time work features most prominently when women are in their 30s, the peak childcare years and a crucial period for career building, its impact on subsequent earnings trajectories is important from a...

We examine the mean and variance-covariance structure of log-wages over calendar time and the life cycle of British men, hereby controlling for birth cohort effects. We attribute the strong increase in mean log-wage during the 1980s and 1990s to a rise in mean log-wage with the year of birth....