IER Newsletter November 2023

IER Newsletter - November 2023

REWAGE presentations to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Business Resilience

In November, Prof. Chris Warhurst presented an update on REWAGE’s recent evidence-based outputs on improving workforce resilience to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Business Resilience.

Before Chris' presentation, Prof. Tom Baum of Strathclyde University, a ReWAGE expert, presented an in-depth ReWAGE analysis of the particular workforce challenges faced by the UK hospitality sector, which was funded by abrdn Financial Fairness Trust.

IER welcomes Dr Sangwoo Lee

Dr Sangwoo Lee joined IER in October. An economist and educationalist by background Sangwoo uses quantitative methods to understand issues in higher education and the labour market, mainly in developed countries. Sangwoo’s research interests include inequalities in higher education and the labour market, with a particular focus on the role of higher education in intergenerational mobility and the importance of job quality in general well-being and graduates’ labour market outcomes.

He previously worked at the University of Cambridge and UCL Institute of Education.

New LMI for All blog: Jobs and AI in the UK

A new LMI for All blog titled "From Automation to Adaptation: Jobs at Risk of Exposure to AI in the UK" has been authored by IER's Jeisson Cardenas-Rubio and IER PhD student Gianni Anelli-Lopez. The blog argues that although the fear of AI-induced job displacement is understandable, the current evidence from the UK suggests that AI tools such as Chat-GPT are not yet leading to job losses.

The initial findings from the UK indicate that since the launch of Chat-GPT, there have been no sizable changes in labour market trends, particularly for jobs deemed susceptible to these types of AI tools. That said, the rapid pace of development in GPTs (Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformers) means that there may yet be transformation in the labour market.

Flexicurity and the future Danish labour market

IER's Prof Trine Larsen and colleague, Anna Ilsøe, have recently published a paper on flexicurity and the future of work based on research conducted in Denmark. The Danish labour market has proven fairly successful with low unemployment, rising employment and high job mobility – which is typically attributed to the Danish flexicurity model.

However, the labour market is evolving and the highly flexible hire-fire rules are increasingly supplemented if not replaced by contractual flexibility i.e. non-standard work according to three main dimensions: employment status, contractual length and weekly working time. These changes have important implications for individual workers, notably those working on the periphery of the Danish labour market who often struggle to access the security elements embedded in the Danish flexicurity model, despite being some of the most flexible workers.

Larsen, T. P. and Ilsøe, A. (2023). Flexicurity on the future labour market: contractual flexibility and increased inequality. Oekonomi & Politik 96 (3):61-82.

New publications

Balogh, R., De Moortel, D., Gadeyne, S., Vanderleyden, J., Warhurst, C.& Vanroelen, C. (2023). Employment quality, past unemployment, mental health and wellbeing in the UKLink opens in a new window (conference abstract). European Journal of Public Health, 33 (Issue Supplement_2)

Matilla-Santander, N., Matthews, A. A., Gunn, V., Muntaner, C., Kreshpaj, B., Wegman, D. H., Sánchez-Martinez, N., Hernando-Rodriguez, J. C, Albin, M., Balogh, R., et al. (2023). Causal effect of shifting from precarious to standard employment on all cause mortality in Sweden: An emulation of a target trial.Link opens in a new window J Epidemiol Community Health, 77(11), 736-743.

IER projects

Find more information on IER's current projects.

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