workforce

This World Bank Policy Research Working Paper estimates the rate of return to firm investments in human capital in the form of formal job training. They use a panel of large firms with unusually detailed information on the duration of training, the direct costs of training, and several firm characteristics such as their output, workforce characteristics, and capital stock. Formal job training is a good investment for many firms and the economy, possibly yielding higher returns than either investments in physical capital or investments in schooling.

This paper reviews the political uproar over offshore outsourcing connected with the release of the Economic Report of the President (ERP) in February 2004, examines the differing ways in which economists and non-economists talk about offshore outsourcing, and assesses the empirical evidence on the importance of offshore outsourcing in accounting for the weak labor market from 2001 to 2004. The evidence offered suggests that increased employment in the overseas affiliates of U.S. multinationals is associated with more employment in the U.S. parent rather than less.

This examination of the New York City economy argues that although the the city has not recaptured the payroll employment level of its peak in 2001, a broader view of the citys economic health, including alternative job measures, wage and salary earnings and a composite index of economic activity, shows that New York continues upon a healthy thrity year trend of job growth.

The author argues further study is necessary to determine whether or not new technologies are increasing the demand for skilled workers. Based on current data, it seems equally possible that new skills in the workforce are leading to the spread of workplace technologies.

This paper takes a new look at the issue of overseas
sourcing of services. The author claims that the reduction of employment in some routine tasks in rich countries in a general equilibrium helps sustain and reinforces employment in the core competencies in such countries. That is, the loss of some jobs permits to retain the core competencies in the core countries.

Despite industry claims to the contrary, the recovery of the U.S. information technology (IT) sector has not created enough new jobs for IT workers, according to the report. The report cites the rise in global IT outsourcing as a factor in the protracted recovery. A growing number of processes and services associated with the industry "have been outsourced to providers in low-wage countries," leaving U.S. IT workers un- or under-employed.

This paper examines the inflow and outflow of workers to different industries in Georgia during the information technology (IT) boom of the 1990s and the subsequent bust. According to the findings, workers in the software and computer services industry were much more likely to have been absent from the Georgia workforce prior to the boom but were no more likely than workers from other industries to have exited the workforce during the bust.

In this paper, the authors investigate the degree of congruence between three definitions of informality based on employment contract registration, social security protection, and the characteristics of the employer and employment using Brazilian household survey data for the period 1992 to 2001.

Using a simple production game, the authors investigate whether public firms perform better when they increase the power of their workers’ incentive schemes. In a laboratory experiment, subjects choose between a ‘public firm’ and a ‘private firm’ with team and individual incentives, respectively. When exposed to individual incentives, workers in the public firm increase effort in one parametrisation, but show a decrease in another.

According to the author, unionism in the United States is contagious; it spills out of coal mines and steel mills into other establishments in the neighborhood, like hospitals and supermarkets. The geographic spillover of unionism is documented here using a newly constructed establishment level data on unionism that is rich in geographic detail. A strong connection is found between unionism of health care establishments today and proximity to unionized coal mines and steel mills from the 1950s.