As we approach this Labor Day, the Pennsylvania economy is growing steadily. Working families are sharing in prosperity in a more sustained way than at any point since 1980--although many families still struggle to make ends meet and, in our polarized nation, a big partisan divide exists in perceptions of whether the economy is better than four…

The purpose of this report is to examine the historical development and policy evolution of workforce intermediaries, a community-based model of education, job training and economic development practices that has become commonplace in local and regional labor markets. Workforce intermediaries broker the relationship between workers and employers,…

When the COVID-19 pandemic plunged the economy back into recession in early 2020, it laid bare a fragile and profoundly inequitable labor market. The economic expansion that reigned from 2009 through 2019 brought historically low unemployment and inflation but failed to reduce income inequality or arrest the decline in the number of high-quality,…

In light of growing difficulties for schools to attract teachers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields and the continued discussions surrounding the unionization of education, this paper examines the effect of collective bargaining (CB) laws on the salary of teachers with a STEM degree. To isolate the effect of…

The COVID-19 pandemic brought unprecedented economic and policy challenges to the United States and other countries. Navigating out of the pandemic slowdown is another novel experience, which makes it more difficult to answer the question addressed each year in the "State of Working Pennsylvania": How is the Pennsylvania economy…

This article explores the efficacy and cost effectiveness of New Labour's skills-based policies to help low paid workers adjust to the pressures generated by globalisation, of which the leading example was Train to Gain (T2G). It also analyses the more general issue of how, why and under what circumstances education, training and skills can help…

Using data from the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, this paper compares the earnings premium and employment share of jobs in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) across 11 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The results reveal that the STEM wage premium…

Using data from the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, this paper compares the earnings premium and employment share of jobs in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) across 11 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The results reveal that the STEM wage premium…

Over the last several decades, the number of Indigenous people in Canada has steadily increased. In the most recent Census (2021), 1.8 million Indigenous people were enumerated, representing a 9.4% increase from 2016. In comparison, the growth of the non-Indigenous population over the same period was 5.3%. Although the number of Indigenous people…

Teacher associations have historically been important agents of teacher advocacy. However, they are now facing challenges due to the crisis of traditional structures. This has allowed the emergence of new teacher associations that seek other forms of participation in educational governance. Via a comparative qualitative analysis of education…

When Indigenous people earn a bachelor's degree, their labour market participation rates are comparable to that of non-Indigenous people's. But are they securing employment opportunities of equal quality to those obtained by their non-Indigenous counterparts after graduation? Using data from the Education and Labour Market Longitudinal Platform…

Theories of market-based school reform suggest that teacher labor markets may be inefficient because schools lack autonomy to incentivize performance in hiring, retention, and compensation. We test this empirically by comparing teacher exits in the deregulated market of New Orleans with neighboring traditional school districts. We find that the…

Empirical evidence on the effects of compensation reform is somewhat scarce. Most U.S. public school teachers are paid according to rigid schedules that determine pay based solely on seniority and academic credentials. In unionized school districts, these schedules are set by collective bargaining agreements. In 2011 when the Wisconsin state…

Research on higher education institution (HEI) employees neglects an essential group--non-instructional staff. Literature on HEI workers and their salaries focuses primarily on faculty and administrators. Furthermore, the literature that does focus on staff salaries neglects variation within this group as well as the role of institutional and…

Racialized individuals are generally more likely than their non-racialized and non-Indigenous counterparts to pursue a university-level education. Despite this, their labour market outcomes are often less favourable. Using data from the integrated file of the Postsecondary Student Information System, the 2016 Census and the T1 Family File, this…