While India’s low female labour force participation has been studied extensively in the recent literature, an aspect that has received insufficient attention is the dynamic nature of employment – that is, individuals enter and exit the workforce at various points in time.

Analysing India Human Development Survey data from 2004-05 and 2011-12, this article shows that women have lower entry rates and higher exit rates vis-à-vis men, both in the short and long term. Read more in this blog published in Ideas for India, here.

* Soham Sahoo, Assistant Professor, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore

The UK Prime Minister has proclaimed a Green Industrial Revolution. This revolution will ‘build green jobs and industries of the future’ the Prime Minister stated. The big question is whether there is employer demand for the jobs that will support this revolution.

Examining new data on vacancies for green jobs suggests that demand is not growing and that further stimuli and support will be needed to deliver this revolution.

With Sydney University based IER Honorary Associate Professor Dr Angie Knox, IER’s Chris Warhurst has published an article in the FT-50 journal Human Relations that calls for a new quality of working life that improves routine jobs and precarious employment.

Read the article here.

The Beyond 4.0 research project examining the future of work and welfare has just published a new policy brief on platform work. It is co-authored by Chris Mathieu of Lund University and Chris Warhurst of IER. It maps out key issues with the operation of the platform economy and offers recommendations for future policy development to better govern it. It arrives just as the European Parliament looks set to initiate new deliberation on this subject. Read more here.

Usually this message is a short one to thank our research partners and sponsors. Whilst we make those thanks, and sincerely, this year is also different. Let’s be honest, 2020 wasn’t a good year.

As the Covid pandemic unfolded, jobs suffered and the labour market is now loosening. The pre-Covid rise in youth unemployment has become worse, a huge swathe of the self-employed have disappeared, and jobs that were furloughed in some industries are now disappearing as government support changes.