Distance travelled and soft outcomes for long-term unemployed review
'The feasibility of developing a methodology for measuring the distance travelled and soft outcomes for long-term unemployed people participating in Active Labour Market Programmes' has just been published by the European Commission. Sally-Anne Barnes and Sally Wright undertook the review as part of the ESF funded European Transnational Employment Platform Project led by AEIDL. The aim of the review was to establish the scope for application of 'Distance Travelled Models', which could be adapted by those supporting long-term employed integration. Sally-Anne and Sally also delivered a half day workshop for the Slovenian public employment services to support the development of a distance travelled model for the labour market programmes.
Barnes, S-A. and Wright, S.A. (2019). The feasibility of developing a methodology for measuring the distance travelled and soft outcomes for long-term unemployed people participating in Active Labour Market Programmes. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union.
Two ESRC-funded PhD students to start at IER
IER has been successful in attracting two new PhD students funded by the ESRC to start in autumn 2019. Under the ESRC collaborative awards, Jon Winfield will be supervised by Professor Chris Warhurst and Dr Sally Wright from IER, alongside John Hood from the Living Wage Foundation, and will be examining aspects of job quality.
Under the ESRC Joint awards, Andreana Glendinning will be supervised by Professor Clare Lyonette from IER and Professor Tracey Warren from the University of Nottingham, and will be examining the employment transitions of military personnel. We look forward to welcoming our new students.
Graduation
We're very proud of Dr Matthew Cooper, who has just graduated from his PhD in Employment Research. Congratulations on his hard work and achievement.
Wil Hunt and Daria Luchinskaya at the ILO
Wil Hunt and Daria Luchinskaya attended an international symposium on internships and traineeships at the ILO in Geneva titled ‘From Education to Employment: How Internships and Traineeships are Challenging Labour Regulation’, held on 11 -12th July. The symposium brought together social science and law academics and researchers from Europe, Australia, South America and South Africa to discuss the challenges that work placements and internships present for labour market regulation. Wil co-presented a paper with Charoula Tzanakou from PAIS at University of Warwick looking at unpaid graduate internships, entitled ‘The (non)instrumental character of unpaid internships: evidence and implications for regulating internships’. Daria’s presentation, co-authored with Charoula and Luca Cattani and Giulio Pedrini from the University of Bologna, looked at work placements and internships carried out whilst at university and was titled ‘The role of internships in graduate labour market transitions in the UK and Italy’.
Skills training in rural Bihar
A new article co-authored by PhD student Bhaskar Chakravorty focuses on a skills training programme (Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushal Yojana, DDUGKY) in Bihar, one of India’s poorest states. Using survey and interview data, the article analyses how socio-economic and demographic characteristics influence participation and the employment effect of the programme. The first finding is that the programme is very well targeted: more than 90 per cent of those who participated or showed an interest in participating came from families living below the poverty line. Secondly, 42 per cent of those who completed the training found a job immediately. However, 2–6 months after the completion of the training, the employment effect of the training was not statistically significant. About a third left their jobs due to caste discrimination and another third left because their salaries did not cover the cost of living. The conclusion of the study is that while the training programme enhances job market prospects, other labour market factors undo the positive effects.
