There continues to be widespread anxiety about the future of work. I recently proposed a labor studies perspective on how to understand and meet undeniable challenges. This follow-up paper explores the implications of my analysis for the contemporary American academy, reflecting on how labor studies can help enlist public research universities in…

This paper positions education as productive work, i.e. radical labour. It argues that education is a deliberate and conscious process directed to the building of human capacities to labour for socialist transformation. In drawing on the intellectual resources left by Marx the objective of education is the production of the "revolutionary…

The Oaxaca-Blinder technique was originally used in labor economics to decompose earnings gaps and to estimate the level of discrimination. It has been applied since in other social issues, including education, where it can be used to assess how much of a gap is due to differences in characteristics (explained variation) and how much is due to…

The aim of this article is to compare the schooling levels of individuals with the demands of the Brazilian labour market. The results demonstrate the high probability of compatibility between occupation and schooling levels. But high propensities for under-education were identified associated with the skin colour and position in the family. The…

Australia, in common with many industrialised countries, must adjust in the coming years to an ageing population. The labour force participation rate is projected to fall and there will be a record number of older people who have retired from work. Thus, there will be fewer workers as a share of the population to generate the income needed to…

In the past year, cash-strapped districts have been handing out pink slips by the hundreds, and some, by the thousands. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that nearly 60,000 teachers were laid off in 2009. State budget gaps and deficit projections, with federal stimulus funding already spent, suggest more of the same for 2010. Some observers…

Calculating the expected rate of return to their own college degree and comparing it to those of students with other majors can be an interesting and fruitful project for students in a labor economics course. Data from the surveys of the National Association of Colleges and Employers (not all that well known but available in most college…

Pensions have long been an important part of compensation for teachers in public schools. However, the incentive structures of teacher pension systems are not widely understood, even though they can have powerful effects on the composition of the teaching force and on public finance. In their research, the authors have found that teacher pension…

The Great Recession left a crater in the labor market that has been devastating for unemployed Americans of all ages. After more than two years of unemployment at well over 8%, there is a hole of more than 11 million jobs, with average spells of unemployment lasting nearly nine months. The weak labor market has been particularly tough on young…

This paper uses the approach in the under/over education literature to analyze the extent of matching of educational level to occupational attainment among adult native born and foreign born men in the US, using the 2000 Census. Overeducation is found to be more common among recent labor market entrants, while undereducation is more likely among…

This research investigates the incidence and wage effects of overskilling for vocational education and training (VET) graduates in Australia between 2001 and 2006. Overskilling is defined as the extent to which workers are able to use their skills and abilities in their current job. The authors compare overskilling with other measures of skill…

Despite numerous empirical studies, there is surprisingly little agreement about whether the Social Security earnings test affects male labor supply. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive analysis of the labor supply effects of the earnings test using longitudinal administrative earnings data and more commonly used survey data. We find that…

In traditional signaling models, education provides a way for individuals to sort themselves by ability. Employers in turn use education to statistically discriminate, paying wages that reflect the average productivity of workers with the same given level of education. In this paper, we provide evidence that education (specifically, attending…

Globalization is putting increasing pressure on jobs in the United Kingdom, particularly among less skilled activities. The European response through the Lisbon Strategy has been diffuse, while UK policy appears much more focused, concentrating on the need to raise education and skill levels. The present paper examines the transition towards a…

In 2004 NCVER invited proposals from a consortia of researchers to address questions relating to changing work skill needs and work organisation arrangements and their implications for the vocational education and training sector. The National Institute of Labour Studies, Flinders University, and the Centre for Post-compulsory Education and…