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The Working Life: The Labor Market for Workers in Low-Skilled Jobs

Nan L. Maxwell
2006

Maxwell presents the results of a survey of 405 employers, which queried them about jobs requiring no more than a high school education and no more than one year of work experience. These data allow her to establish the link between skills and low-skilled jobs and to reveal the current state of the labor market facing low-skilled workers. The data also highlights the knowledge and skills that employers require in low-skilled jobs and the abilities that individuals who apply for those jobs bring to the table.
Job Training That Gets Results: Ten Principles of Effective Employment Programs

Michael Bernick
2005

Bernick shows the types of training programs that work and describes for whom they work. He identifies ways to improve performance among Workforce Investment Act (WIA) contractors while exploring the best uses for state discretionary WIA funds. He also describes what it takes to make an effective career ladder program, how postemployment welfare retention or skill advancement programs can succeed, and the type of training that workers with disabilities must go through to get and retain jobs.
Safety Practices, Firm Culture, and Workplace Injuries

Richard J. Butler and Yong-Seung Park
2005

The authors present analysis of the impact of various HRM practices on firms’ workers’ compensation costs; specifically, which practices lower firms’ workers’ compensation costs and whether the impact is the result of changes in technical efficiency or comes through induced changes in workers’ behavior.
The Economics of Sustainable Development

Sisay Asefa
2005

This title provides an economic perspective on critical issues that characterize the topic of sustainable development. In each case, the authors give hope that the challenges facing societies can be surmounted and millions can be lifted out of poverty by adopting policies that encourage the investment in human capital, democratic institutions, and improved market performance.
Unemployment Compensation Throughout the World: A Comparative Analysis

Wayne Vroman and Vera Brusentsev
2005

The authors book that contains a contemporary perspective and review of UC programs in numerous countries throughout the world.
Welfare and Work: Experiences in Six Cities

Christopher T. King and Peter R. Mueser
2005

King and Mueser examine changes in welfare participation and labor market involvement of welfare recipients in six major cities during the 1990s. By focusing on these six cities (Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Fort Lauderdale, Houston, and Kansas City) they are able to glean the extent to which differences in state and local policy, administrative directives, and local labor market conditions contribute to the trends in caseloads, employment, and well-being observed among former recipients.
Workplace Injuries and Diseases: Prevention and Compensation - Essays in Honor of Terry Thomason

Karen Roberts, John F. Burton, and Matthew M. Bodah
2005

This book presents a set of essays from a group of leading scholars that provides a detailed overview of what is known about the disability insurance system while highlighting areas of the system that beg for greater understanding.
Adequacy of Earnings Replacement in Workers' Compensation Programs: A Report of the Study Panel on Benefit Adequacy of the Workers' Compensation Steering Committee, National Academy of Social Insurance

H. Allan Hunt and National Academy of Social Insurance
2004

The Workers’ Compensation Steering Committee of the National Academy of Social Insurance formed the Benefit Adequacy Study Panel to review the literature on benefit adequacy and to develop an approach to document what is currently known—and not known—about benefit adequacy in WC programs. The panel documents the extent to which WC cash benefits replace workers’ lost wages, and assesses the adequacy of that wage replacement.
By a Thread: How Child Care Centers Hold On to Teachers, How Teachers Build Lasting Careers

Marcy Whitebook and Laura Sakai
2004

Marcy Whitebook and Laura Sakai examine how child care programs and their staff subsist in a field characterized by low pay, low status, and high turnover and what the impacts of these factors are on the quality of child care provided.
Communities and Workforce Development

Edwin Meléndez
2004

The studies presented here constitute a significant step towards a comprehensive assessment of the role that community organizations played in revamping the employment services industry. Most importantly, they show how a new style of labor market intermediary has evolved from focusing almost exclusively on the provision of employment services to job seekers to simultaneously addressing the needs of both job seekers and employers.
Does "Trickle Down" Work?: Economic Development Strategies and Job Chains in Local Labor Markets

Joseph Persky, Daniel Felsenstein, and Virginia Carlson
2004

Persky, Felsenstein, and Carlson explore a new framework for evaluating state and local economic development efforts. They propose a method, referred to as the “job-chains approach,” that they say clarifies the potential justifications for economic development subsidies as well as the limitations surrounding these efforts. This innovative approach addresses not only the number of job vacancies created as a result of a subsidized business investment or expansion, but also the extent to which gains are achieved by the unemployed and the underemployed, whether skilled or unskilled.
International Trade and Labor Markets: Theory, Evidence, and Policy Implications

Carl Davidson and Steven J. Matusz
2004

Davidson and Matusz develop simple yet compelling models that allow for documented differences in labor markets across countries in order to investigate the impact of trade and trade policies on society's underclass.
Job Training Policy in the United States

Christopher J. O'Leary, Robert A. Straits, and Stephen A. Wandner
2004

This book provides a broad overview of federally funded job training programs as they exist today. The notable list of contributors review what training consists of and how training programs are implemented under WIA. In particular, they examine training service providers and methods of delivering training services, including the use of individual training accounts and eligible training provider lists. Performance management under WIA is examined, as well as the effectiveness of training programs. In addition, public training programs are compared to private training provided in the United States and to public training programs offered in other industrial nations.
Kids at Work: The Value of Employer-Sponsored On-Site Child Care Centers

Rachel Connelly, Deborah S. DeGraff, and Rachel A. Willis
2004

Connelly, DeGraff, and Willis chronicle the trends in the growth in on-site child care programs and perform analyses that shed light on the value of employer-sponsored child care to employees. The authors note that employees may not be the only ones to benefit. Employers may be able to gain wage savings for the firm.
Labor Exchange Policy in the United States

David E. Balducchi, Randall W. Eberts, and Christopher J. O'Leary
2004

This book describes the evolution of labor exchange policy in the United States, summarizes the major findings about the effectiveness of labor exchange services, and offers reflections on the future for labor exchange policy. In addition, the contributors provide an international perspective on job brokerage functions and a discussion on the appropriate role for governments in helping job seekers and employers make the proper job match.
Leaving Welfare: Employment and Well-Being of Families that Left Welfare in the Post-Entitlement Era

Gregory Acs and Pamela Loprest
2004

Acs and Loprest pull together information from a host of leaver studies to provide a bottom line assessment of what was learned. They compare welfare leaver outcomes across geographic areas and the nation as a whole. This effort allows them to paint a comprehensive picture of the employment, income, and hardships families experience after leaving welfare.
Workplace Justice Without Unions

Hoyt N. Wheeler, Brian S. Klaas, and Douglas M. Mahony
2004

Wheeler, Klaas, and Mahony provide a thorough analysis of organizational justice systems by exploring nonunion systems of workplace justice and comparing them with the union system, American courts, and systems in 11 other countries.
Bargaining for Competitiveness: Law, Research, and Case Studies

Richard N. Block
2003

This book offers an analysis of the relationship among collective bargaining, firm competitiveness, and employment protections and creation in the United States. The contributors provide an overview of the legal framework and the economic and industrial relations research on collective bargaining, competitiveness, and employment, then follow with four case studies that provide insights into the process of collective bargaining and its current status in the evolving U.S. labor-management system.
Helping Working Families: The Earned Income Tax Credit

Saul D. Hoffman and Laurence S. Seidman
2003

Hoffman and Seidman offer a thorough assessment of the EITC in which they analyze, evaluate, summarize, and critique the state of the program. They find that, overall, the EITC works well, and that it has earned its political popularity. Yet they also uncover several problem areas that they address with specific recommendations based on their analysis.
Human Capital in the United States from 1975 to 2000: Patterns of Growth and Utilization

Robert H. Haveman, Andrew Bershadker, and Jonathan A. Schwabish
2003

This study enhances the existing measures of the nation’s human capital and the extent to which that capital is utilized. Haveman, Bershadker, and Schwabish develop an indicator of the value of the human capital stock held by the nation’s working-age population called Earnings Capacity (EC), and use it to study the time trends in aggregate human capital in the United States and human capital per worker. They also use EC to evaluate utilization of the nation’s human capital stock, thereby demonstrating the usefulness of the EC indicator in measuring the size and strength of the U.S. economy.
Income and Influence: Social Policy in Emerging Market Economies

Ethan B. Kapstein and Branko Milanovic
2003

The authors study the connection between economic reform and social policy, and why such reforms failed to produce the tide needed to lift all boats in the transition economies of eastern and central Europe and of Asia.
Job Creation, Job Destruction, and International Competition

Michael W. Klein, Scott Schuh, and Robert K. Triest
2003

The authors present a picture of how the effects of international trade on employment in U.S. manufacturing industries vary widely. They explore the labor-market dynamics and adjustment costs associated with international factors, particularly the way fluctuations in exchange rates, overseas economic activity, and the altering of trade restrictions contribute to churning-the simultaneous job creation among some firms and job destruction among others.
Labor Standards in the United States and Canada

Richard N. Block, Ronald O. Clarke, and Karen Roberts
2003

Block, Roberts, and Clarke offer a method for comparing ten labor standards across political jurisdictions. They then apply this method to the United States and Canada, an exercise that allows them to settle the long-running dispute over whether or not Canada has higher standards than the U.S., and if so, to what degree.
Nonstandard Work in Developed Economies: Causes and Consequences

Susan N. Houseman and Machiko Osawa
2003

This book reveals the considerable variation in the levels of growth in a broad set of nonstandard work arrangements while presenting a comprehensive view of how, as a result, the nature of the employment relationship is changing within and among countries. The international roster of economists, sociologists, and labor law experts who contributed draw on cross-country variations in economic conditions and institutional characteristics to explain why some arrangements have grown faster in some countries than in others and what this means for workers. By considering a broad array of nonstandard work arrangements in a number of economies, the authors provide a richer understanding than if the focus had been limited to a single country of one or a short-list of employment arrangements.
The Decline in Employment of People with Disabilities: A Policy Puzzle

David C. Stapleton and Richard V. Burkhauser
2003

The book begins with a documentation of the employment rate decline and ends by spelling out the implications of this decline for public policy. However, the bulk of the book provides a detailed examination of the various explanations for the puzzling decline in employment among the working-aged population with disabilities.