Labour market job matching for UK minority ethnic groups

Estimates of over education from different ethnic groups are presented using a new method of calculating over education and data from the UK Labour Force Survey. Calibrated against existing mean methods, the new approach leads to lower levels of over education for men and women. While the overall extent of over education has similarities with earlier studies, the differences between ethnic groups are far less than those found in some studies and fall even further when we control for other productivity related differences. Gender differences can be partially explained by differences in working part-time, whereas some ethnic differences are exacerbated slightly by being temporarily over educated, as well as by differences in the subject of degree

Ethnic differences in women's employment: the changing role of qualifications

We pool eight Spring QLFS quarters for 1992-1995 and 2000-2003 to examine female employment changes by ethnic group. We find that employment has significantly increased for all women except Black Caribbean/Other women. We show that qualifications have played an increasingly important role and there has been increased polarisation between the employment of women with a degree compared to those without. This is especially large for Pakistani/Bangladeshi women. Our decomposition analysis shows that employment changes between the early 1990s and the 2000s are mainly a consequence of changes in characteristics. However, decomposing white/non-white mean employment differences demonstrates a fall in the unexplained discriminatory component for most ethnic groups. Hence differences in white and non-white characteristics explain more of the 2000-3 employment differential than in 1993-5. Furthermore, significant unexplained ethnic penalties of up to 50 percent still exist for South Asian women

Gender differences in occupational wage mobility in the 1958 cohort

This article examines the wage growth of British men and women between the ages of 33 and 42 who were employed full time at both of these ages using the 1958 National Child and Development Study. Wage growth is examined in the differences of the log of hourly wage rates reported at the 33 and 42 year old interviews of this cohort study. Men were found to have higher wage growth rewards than women when in higher occupations and be more likely than women to be in these higher wage growth occupations. Women's wages grew more slowly over the period than men's wages because they were located disproportionately in lower growth and feminized jobs. Domestic ties did not explain the differences in wage growth for this group, where the occupational penalties of gender widened. Copyright © 2008 BSA Publications Ltd

Vertical occupational mobility and its measurement

This paper describes a number of alternative approaches to devising a vertical occupational scale and compares the outcomes of different scales on calculations of occupational mobility. The paper describes the conceptual issues relevant to calculating occupational mobility and documents the measurement error embedded in the choice of measure, as applied to different data sets. The ranking schemes used include SOC (9) major codes ranked by mean occupational hourly earnings, Hope-Goldthorpe collapsed 36-point scores, a 15-category SOC ranking based on educational qualifications, and a 77 category ranking based on 2-digit SOC90 occupations, wage rates, educational qualifications, training and job tenure. These ranking schemes are applied to data from the 1958 NCDS cohort between the ages of 23 to 33 and 33 to 42, and to 1.25 year transitions in the Quarterly Labour Force Survey panel data. The calculations carried out show that variations in the extent of vertical occupational mobility, both upward and downward, had systematic elements. The extent of mobility was found to vary by the composition of the individuals´ data particularly in terms of lifecourse stages and gender, the number of categories in the ranking scheme, attrition in the data and flows out of employment over the mobility period, and changes in labour market conditions over time. However, the sizes of these effects were very variable

Introduction: changing lives and new challenges

How is women's employment shaped by family and domestic responsibilities? This book, written by leading experts in the field, examines twenty five years of change in women's employment and addresses the challenges facing women today. This book offers an innovative analysis of how global changes including new migration processes, educational expansion, transnational labour markets, technological advances, and the global economy affect women's labour market experiences. It tackles issues relevant for future change, including gender inequalities and ethnic diversities and confronts such contentious questions as what work-life balance means? This book provides new empirical research that advances our understanding of the challenges posed by women's employment in our changing society and draws out the policy lessons that could improve economic and social well-being