On 23rd November, Professor Francis Green presented a keynote paper to the second PIAAC Research meeting, held in Amsterdam. Around 100 participants took part, including OECD staff, delegates from education departments in OECD member countries, and other academic researchers.
His address, which covered joint work with LLAKES researcher Golo Henseke, was entitled: “High-skilled jobs and the employment of graduates”. This paper extended to 15 countries an application of their classification methodology for defining “graduate jobs”. Among the OECD countries for which occupation data was available, the paper found that 28% of jobs were graduate jobs, rather more than the 21% suggested by the main existing indicators. However, there was a considerable range across countries. The nation with the lowest proportion of graduate jobs was the Czech Republic with 20%, while Norway held the highest at 44%. Professor Green argued that the extent to which countries used graduates depended on the overall level of skills, the relative quality of graduates compared with vocationally-trained high-skilled labour, and the relative price of graduate labour. These analyses are important in the light of the massification of higher education in almost all countries in the industrialised world and even in many developing countries. Increasingly, commentators are asking the question, where are the “graduate jobs” to absorb so many graduates?
The proceedings of this conference will be published by the OECD during 2016. For a discussion of the method used to define graduate jobs in Britain, see: Green, F. and G. Henseke (2014) The Changing Graduate Labour Market: Analysis Using a New Indicator of Graduate Jobs Institute of Education, LLAKES Research Paper 50.
Report, EWCS6
On 24th November, Professor Francis Green gave a keynote presention to a joint conference of Eurofound and the Luxembourg Presidency of the Council of the European Union. The conference marked the first findings from the 6th Working Conditions Survey, carried out this year across Europe and beyond. Around 120 participants took part, including Eurofound staff, delegates from DG6 in Brussels, politicians, trade union and employer representatives, and other academic researchers.
The address, entitled: “Changes in Job Quality”, focused on work intensification and rising job insecurity. Professor Green identified France and Luxembourg as two examples of countries where work had been intensified during the 2000s, while in the Netherlands work intensity had fallen somewhat. The causes of work intensification generally were effort-biased technological change, and the shifting power balance between workers and employers. Both excessive work intensity and high job insecurity had serious potential health consequences, which could be ameliorated by fostering a culture of participation at work, and enabling high levels of social support from managers or other workers. The effects of insecurity could also be lessened by ensuring workers were more easily re-employed in the event of redundancy. Above all, Professor Green argued, it was important to avoid bad macroeconomic policies which unduly restricted demand, raised unemployment and stimulated a rise in the fear of job loss among many millions of workers beyond just the unemployed.
This paper extended to 15 countries an application of their classification methodology for defining “graduate jobs”. Among the OECD countries for which occupation data was available, the paper found that 28% of jobs were graduate jobs, rather more than the 21% suggested by the main existing indicators. However, there was a considerable range across countries. The nation with the lowest proportion of graduate jobs was the Czech Republic with 20%, while Norway held the highest at 44%. Professor Green argued that the extent to which countries used graduates depended on the overall level of skills, the relative quality of graduates compared with vocationally-trained high-skilled labour, and the relative price of graduate labour. These analyses are important in the light of the massification of higher education in almost all countries in the industrialised world and even in many developing countries. Increasingly, commentators are asking the question, where are the “graduate jobs” to absorb so many graduates?
The proceedings of this conference will be published by the OECD during 2016.
See Green, F. (2006) Demanding Work: The Paradox of Job Quality in the Affluent Economy, Princeton University Press. (Paperback Edition, 2007.)