Employability strongly moderates the effects of unemployment and of job insecurity on life satisfaction and mental health. Using nationally representative panel data from Australia, I find that an ...increase in employability from zero to 100% cancels around three quarters, in some cases more, of the detrimental effect of unemployment. Employability also matters for employees: an increase in men's employability from zero to 100% reduces the detrimental effect of job insecurity by more than half. The effects of extreme job insecurity and of unemployment are large and of comparable magnitudes. The findings are used to compute estimates of the well-being trade-off between increases in job insecurity and increases in employability, relevant to the support of “flexicurity” policies, and of the “misery multiplier”, the extent to which the effect of a rise in aggregate unemployment on those becoming unemployed is supplemented by the effects on others’ insecurity and employability.
Over the past ten years, the EU has been seeking ways to increase the adaptability of employees and enterprises, as well as the flexibility of labour markets. Since 2006, the keyword has been ...flexicurity, and the implementation of this concept is intended to achieve the desired changes in labour relations. Accordingly, Estonia has attempted to reform labour relations in the light of the idea of flexicurity and adopted the Employment Contracts Act in 2008. This law comprises several amendments, the aim of which is to make labour relations more flexible. This article focuses on some critical aspects of the reforms that have had the greatest impact on the functioning of labour relations in Estonia. The author analyses whether the implementation of the idea of flexicurity in Estonia has been successful.
Can perceived employability mitigate the negative impacts of job insecurity on wellbeing?. We address this question using fixed-effects models on panel data from. Switzerland. To measure job ...insecurity, we use two subjective indicators (risk of job. loss and fear of job loss in the last year) and an objective one (having a temporary contract). We assess well-being by studying job satisfaction, life satisfaction, and mental health, and perform separate analyses for men and women. Results suggest that employability does not mitigate the impacts of job insecurity on job satisfaction. For life satisfaction, employability reduces the impacts of the risk of job loss in the last year, but only among men. Regarding mental health, employability partially offsets the impacts of the risk of job loss in the last year for both men and women. We conclude that even though employability might help, it does not shield workers from the negative impacts of job insecurity. This suggests that the flexicurity strategy falls short of mitigating the non-pecuniary impacts of job insecurity.
Danish Flexicurity Kreiner, Claus Thustrup; Svarer, Michael
The Journal of economic perspectives,
10/2022, Letnik:
36, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Denmark is one of the richest countries in the world and achieves this in combination with low inequality, low unemployment, and high-income security. This performance is often attributed to the ...Danish labor market model characterized by what has become known as flexicurity. This essay describes and evaluates Danish flexicurity. The Danish experience shows that flexicurity in itself, that is, flexible hiring and firing rules for firms combined with high income security for workers, is insufficient for successful outcomes. The flexicurity policy also needs to include comprehensive active labor market programs (ALMPs) with compulsory participation for recipients of unemployment compensation. Denmark spends more on active labor market programs than any other OECD country. We review theory showing how ALMPs can mitigate adverse selection and moral hazard problems associated with high income security and review empirical evidence on the effectiveness of ALMPs from the ongoing Danish policy evaluation, which includes a systematic use of randomized experiments. We also discuss the aptness of flexicurity to meet challenges from globalization, automation, and immigration and the trade-offs that the United States (or other countries) would face in adopting a flexicurity policy.
In this paper we study the effect of a micro-level measure of flexicurity on workers' job satisfaction. To this end, using micro-data from the Eurobarometer survey, we disaggregate the sample of ...workers into different groups according not only to their employment contract (i.e. permanent or temporary), but also to their perceived job security, and we evaluate differences in job satisfaction between these groups. After the potential endogeneity of job type has been controlled for, the results show that what matters for job satisfaction is not just the type of contract, but mainly the perceived job security, which may be independent of the type of contract.
The combination “temporary but secure job” seems preferable to the combination “permanent but insecure job”, indicating that the length of the contract may be less important if the worker perceives that s/he is not at risk of becoming unemployed. Our main conclusions are robust to the use of alternative definitions of workers' types and they generally hold within different welfare regimes and also for different aspects of job satisfaction, mainly those more related to job security.
Before the crisis, flexicurity was a leading European Union (EU) policy concept, which aimed to balance labor-market flexibility and security. The recent focus on austerity measures to reduce public ...deficits might be thought to have reduced attention to the 'security' component of flexicurity. Accordingly, a 'farewell to flexicurity' has been claimed to have occurred. This paper challenges that claim and explores the role of flexicurity within the European Semester. It analyses the European Semester's policy goals between 2007 and 2016, as well as the country-specific recommendations (CSRs) to member states between 2009 and 2015. The analysis shows that the EU flexicurity concept has been revitalized, while its definition changed to encompass more social concerns. Even at the peak of the crisis, CSRs continued to devote attention to elements of both flexibility and security, although the precise details differed across countries and have changed over time.
This mixed-methods study explores the intersection of the ‘gig’ economy and welfare state in Australia, exploring how ride-share work has provided a pathway into paid work for three traditionally ...disadvantaged groups: individuals with disability, with caring responsibilities, or aged 45 and over. It examines these workers’ motivations for the work and explores how the welfare system shapes their experiences. The study finds push factors, such as past labour market discrimination and limited alternatives, and pull factors, like the relative flexibility of the work, which allows for the accommodation of planned and unplanned absences, are driving individuals into the ‘gig’ economy. The authors identify a duality about these experiences. On the one hand, the work represents a de facto form of ‘workfare’. On the other, the welfare system is cushioning the work’s job and income insecurity, providing individuals with flexibility and security unavailable elsewhere, an unintended policy outcome the authors label ‘accidental flexicurity’.
As the "smart grid" paradigm becomes more prevalent, fundamental techno-economic challenges prominently arise. The variability of renewables energy sources (RES) requires conventional generators to ...remain active and operate inefficiently. The grid's inertia grows weaker, jeopardizing its stability. Ever more frequent network-related issues threaten the grid's security. The industry experiences extensive degrees of price cannibalization, resulting in negative prices and RES down-regulating their production to avoid severe penalties. To this day, no work has presented a critical industrial view of the issues and each asset's presence within the grid-market setting. This letter showcases the main industrial criticisms of electricity markets and investigates the "flexicurity" potential of energy assets. We ponder how flexibility and security could be grouped into a unified product, and discuss a shift towards a flexicurity-based market. Considering the desired state of the 2050 European grid, we offer some thoughts on possible asset integration routes.
The flexibility and security of the international labor market has been severely affected by the pandemic crisis. The present study analyses the flexicurity strategy as a crisis tool for eliminate ...the negative consequences caused by pandemic crisis. European countries have successfully implemented the Kurzabeit anti-crisis model. In order to financially support, EU has created The SURE program. In crisis, the employees worked part-time and the salary was paid by the employer for the hours worked, and the rest was compensated by the state. In the Republic of Moldova, the labor market has been severely affected by the pandemic crisis, but measures to protect employers and employees have been delayed or selective. As a result, many employees lost their jobs, the number of unemployed has increase. So, the countries that have implemented flexicurity actions or measures and have achieved tangible results in the segment of employment and modernization of the labor market, have reacted quickly and managed the changes and the shock caused by the labor market by COVID-19. Finally, are presented measures for the recovery of the labor market in the post-pandemic period.
This study computes a flexicurity index for the EU28 countries for 2001-2019 following the European Commission’s four components of flexicurity model. The index allows the ex-post assessment of ...flexicurity efforts and efficiency. Following the computation of the index, we compare its values against the theoretical flexicurity typologies and against other empirical flexicurity groupings to assess their (dis)similarities. Even though Northern and Western countries generally have higher flexicurity scores than Southern and Eastern states, the study shows some countries deviate from their theoretical performance. Thus, some of the Continental and Mediterranean countries have flexicurity values like those of the Nordic group. Moreover, the flexicurity regimes are not static as the theoretical typology suggests: while Denmark and France are always in the top performers’ group, other countries change their performance throughout the 2001-2019 period. The flexicurity index correlates highly with empirical country groupings in the literature. The highest correlation is with country groupings using the European Commission’s four components of flexicurity model, followed by the Golden Danish Triangle, and lastly, the Wilthagen and Tros’ flexicurity matrix. In the end, we compare EU countries’ performance in the flexicurity index scores with their performance in selected employment and unemployment rates, labor productivity, and poverty rates. Results suggest that higher flexicurity performance correlates generally with better labor market and social outcomes, the highest correlations being in the case of labor productivity rates.
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