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This chapter examines the dynamics of occupational segregation by gender in the German vocational training system (VET) and explores the validity of two hypotheses regarding the causes of changes in the sex composition of occupations. According to the first, the ‘job growth hypothesis’, feminisation of occupations occurs when women increasingly enter growing employment sectors that are experiencing a shortage of (preferred) male candidates. According to the second, the ‘exit hypothesis’, the movement of men out of selected occupations is the main mechanism driving the changes. Using official data from enrolment into the VET of skilled crafts for the period of 1997–2013, we find a very high level of occupational segregation, a very modest trend toward desegregation and a substantial increase of female representation in a group of selected training occupations. Our analysis implies that the rising share of female apprentices within these fields cannot be explained by an increased entry of young women into growing employment sectors, but that it mainly results from a disproportionate reduction of male participation in select occupations.

This paper tests whether employers responded particularly negatively to African American job applicants during the deep U.S. recession that began in 2007. Theories of labor queuing and social closure posit that members of privileged groups will act to minimize labor market competition in times of economic turbulence, which could advantage Whites relative to African Americans. Although social closure should be weakest in the less desirable, low-wage job market, it may extend downward during recessions, pushing minority groups further down the labor queue and exacerbating racial inequalities in hiring. We consider two complementary data sources: (1) a field experiment with a randomized block design and (2) the nationally representative NLSY97 sample. Contrary to expectations, both analyses reveal a comparable recession-based decline in job prospects for White and African American male applicants, implying that hiring managers did not adapt new forms of social closure and demonstrating the durability of inequality even in times of structural change. Despite this proportionate drop, however, the recession left African Americans in an extremely disadvantaged position. Whites during the recession obtained favorable responses from employers at rates similar to African Americans prior to the recession. The combination of experimental methods and nationally representative longitudinal data yields strong evidence on how race and recession affect job prospects in the low-wage labor market.

This article describes the aims and background of the RIDDLE project, which was funded by the Libraries Programme of the Commission of the European Communities' (CEC's) Telematics Research and Technological Development Programme. RIDDLE (Rapid Information Display and Dissemination in a Library Environment) started in February 1993 and ended in December 1994. A subsequent article will deal with the technical side of the project in more detail. Further information is available via World Wide Web at the following sites:

Since Jan. 1, 2019, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' (CMS) rule requiring hospitals publish their “standard charges” (also called “charge description masters” or “chargemasters”) in a public, machine-readable format has been in effect. The research at hand assesses hospital compliance with the federal regulation. In addition, a sentiment analysis of the chargemaster webpages compared to hospital homepages is performed to assess the consumer friendliness of the content in terms of language usage. A stratified sample of 212 hospitals was used to conduct observations. Strata were based on patient satisfaction scores drawn from the Hospital Consumer Assessment of health care Providers and Systems survey, and controls for hospital bed size and geographic US census region were utilized from the American Hospital Association Annual Survey. Descriptive statistics are presented, and chi-square testing is used to test for statistically significant differences. Key results are presented for compliance and sentiment. Most hospitals' websites are not presenting chargemaster data in a way that is readily collectable or comparable to other facilities. In addition, the tone of language used on chargemaster transparency webpages is generally more negative than that of hospitals' homepages. In particular, the messaging on transparency pages routinely suggests consumers to not use the data for decision-making purposes.

Public health measures implemented early in the COVID-19 pandemic brought the idea of essential work into the public discourse, as the public reflected upon what types of work are essential for society to function, who performs that work, and how the labour of essential workers is rewarded. This chapter focusses on the rewards associated with essential work. The authors develop an intersectional lens on work that was officially deemed essential in 2020 to highlight longstanding patterns of devaluation among essential workers, including those undergirded by systemic racism in employment and labour law. The authors use quantitative data from the CPS-MORG to examine earnings differences between essential and non-essential workers and investigate whether the essential worker wage gap changed from month to month in 2020. The authors find that patterns of valuation among essential workers cannot be explained by human capital or other standard labour market characteristics. Rather, intersectional wage inequalities in 2020 reflect historical patterns that are highly durable and did not abate in the first year of the global pandemic.

Suggests that the entrenched cultural norms affect the progress of women into and through the ranks of management. Uses culturally disparate, economically similar societies to seek an insight into female progression up the corporate ladder. Employs a social‐structural framework for analysis to explore comparative statistics. Conclude that cultural differences substantially influence the social, organisational and legal mechanisms that encourage or discourage discrimination.

To identify the trajectories of occupational mobility among non-EU immigrant workers in Europe and to test empirical data against neoclassical human capital theory that predicts upward occupational mobility and labor market segmentation theories proposing immigrant confinement to secondary segments.

Data from survey and semi-structured interviews (2,859 and 357, respectively) with immigrants from Brazil, Ukraine, and Morocco in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Portugal, and Norway. Multinomial regression analysis to test the likelihood of moving downward, upward, or stability and identify explanatory factors, complemented with qualitative evidence.

We found support for the thesis of segmented labor market theories of limited upward occupational mobility following migration. However, immigrants with longer residence in the destination country have higher chances of upward mobility compared to stability and downward mobility, giving also support for the neoclassical human capital theory. Frail legal status impacts negatively on upward mobility chances and men more often experience upward mobility after migration than women.

Findings reflect the specific situation of immigrants from three origin countries in four destination areas and cannot be taken as representative. In the multinomial regression we cannot distinguish between cohort effects and duration of stay.

Education obtained in the destination country is very important for migrants’ upward occupational mobility, bearing important policy implications with regards to migrants’ integration.

Its focus on trajectories of mobility through migration looking at two important transitions: (1) from last occupation in the origin country to first occupation at destination and (2) from first occupation to current occupation and offers a wide cross-country comparison both in terms of origin and destination countries in Europe.

Public administration scholarship has yielded important insights about the extent to which government bureaucracies function as representative institutions. While evidence suggests women and minorities fare better in obtaining higher level positions within government versus the private sector, much less is known about the career trajectories in the third sector. The rise of nonprofit employment has been attributed to widespread government contracting, resulting in a model of government-nonprofit relationships described as complementary and mutually beneficial. Since both are “public-serving,” government and nonprofits share many values. Representative bureaucracy represents one such common value. This article explores the capacity of nonprofit organizations in furthering the aims of representative bureaucracy, and proposes a research agenda for the comparative study of public and nonprofit employment

In this paper, we develop a conceptual framework for understanding the impact of workforce diversity on labor market outcomes. We argue that to understand the impact of workforce diversity, we must consider the effects of power (the distribution of valued and scarce resources), status (the relationships among people and groups), and numbers (the compositional effects of the unit), whether in the work group, job, occupation, firm, or society. We then discuss the mechanisms that generate and reproduce these dimensions of inequality and explain how they contribute to everyday practices such as allocation decisions and evaluative processes and ultimately lead to sustained or durable inequality (e.g. labor force outcomes including attitudes, behaviors, and material and psychic rewards).