Institute for Employment Research » IER News & blogs (tag [labour market])

Conference presentation in Jamaica

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 12:00:00 GMT

IER's Dr Jamelia Harris presented early findings from the project "Colonial legacies and the labour market in the English-speaking Caribbean" at the West Indies Economic Conference (WECON) 2026. The conference was held in Kingston, Jamaica and brought together economists working on issues in the Caribbean region.

Network-based recruitment and the labour market effects

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 12:00:00 GMT

A new research paper by IER's Dr. Jamelia Harris has been published in Work Employment and Society. The article analyses how employers and university-educated jobseekers behave when networks are overly used, and connections supersede merit in recruitment. It advances the debate by exploring the effects of networks on how the labour market for the university-educated functions, and how the normalisation of network-based recruitment affects this segment of the labour market.

IER researcher on the Economics of Trust

Thu, 27 Nov 2025 12:00:00 GMT

IER's Dr Jamelia Harris was an invited panellist for the Institute of Chartered Accountant's of Trinidad and Tobago's 16th annual conference. The conference was held on November 20th and 21st in Trinidad and Tobago. Dr Harris contributed to the panel "The Economics of Trust", where she highlighted the importance of trust in various segments of the economy, including the labour market.

Research presentation in Barbados

Wed, 29 Oct 2025 12:00:00 GMT

IER's Dr Jamelia Harris, together with Dexnell Peter's of the University of the West Indies, Mona campus, presented some of the main ideas and early findings from the research project "Colonial Legacies and the Labour Market in the English-speaking Caribbean." The seminar was hosted by the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill campus, and was live-streamed regionally.

Dr Sangwoo Lee on the Latest ONS Employment Statistics

Tue, 10 Jun 2025 09:00:00 GMT

The latest UK labour market presents a mixed but increasingly concerning picture as structural pressures intensify. The unemployment rate rose to 4.6% in February-April 2025, up from 4.4% quarterly and marking the highest level since Q1 2021. The employment rate improved modestly to 75.1%, with economic inactivity declining to 21.3%.

Chat-GPT and the UK Labour Market: A Year in Review - Blog by Dr Jeisson Cardenas-Rubio and Gianni Anelli-Lopez

Fri, 07 Jun 2024 09:30:00 GMT

A new LMI for All blog by Dr Jeisson Cardenas-Rubio and Gianni Anelli-Lopez on Chat-GPT and the UK Labour Market: A Year in Review extends on the analysis of their previous blog to show how things have developed over the past six months, incorporating fresh insights with data up to December 2023.

Call for abstracts: Conference on The International Working Party on Labour Market Segmentation

Wed, 21 Feb 2024 10:00:00 GMT

The 42^nd International Working Party on Labour Market Segmentation (IWPLMS) conference aims to explore the challenges and opportunities arising from transformations in the world of work with a specific focus on the multifaceted dimensions of labour market segmentation.

The conference will take place at Copenhagen Business School on September 5-6, 2024, with IER’s Professor Trine Larsen being one of the local organisers. Abstract submission deadline is March 15, 2024. For more information please visit the conference website.

Assessment of work skills is essential for today’s labour market

Fri, 15 Dec 2023 12:25:00 GMT

Gianni Anelli’s research article 'But which skills? : Natural Language Processing tools and the identification of high-demand skills in online job advertisements' discusses the relevance of data from online job portals. Using two skills dictionaries, the ESCO dictionary and a national labour market dictionary, this study extracted required skills from Chilean online job advertisements.

Presentation at the RSS Annual Conference

Thu, 05 Oct 2023 13:09:00 GMT

Gianni Anelli Lopez, PhD student at IER, gave a talk at the Royal Statistical Society (RSS) Annual Conference in Harrogate in early September on 'Extracting skills in online job advertisements: using Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools on labour skills assessment'.

How can skill systems in Europe reduce the level of skills mismatch in labour markets?

Tue, 23 Aug 2022 16:10:00 GMT

IER's Professor Terence Hogarth has successfully secured Horizon Europe funding for his project Skills2Capability. The project is about understanding how skill systems across Europe can reduce the level of skills mismatch in their labour markets.