Piotr Lewandowski

Shocks and rigidities as determinants of CEE labour markets’ performance

In this article, the impact of real wage, productivity, labour demand and supply shocks on eight Central and Eastern European (CEE) economies from 1996–2007 is analysed with a panel structural vector error correction model. A set of long‐run restrictions derived from the dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model is used to identify structural shocks, and fluctuations in foreign demand are controlled for. We find that the propagation of shocks on CEE labour markets resembles that found for OECD countries. Labour demand shocks emerge as the main determinant of employment and unemployment variability in the short‐to‐medium run, but wage rigidities were equally important for observed labour market performance, especially in Poland, Czech Republic and Lithuania. We associate these rigidities with collective bargaining, minimum wage, active labour market policies and employment protection legislation.

A routine transition in the digital era? The rise of routine work in Central and Eastern Europe:

In this article, we study the shift from manual to cognitive work in 10 Central and Eastern European economies. While highlighting the growth in the non-routine cognitive component of jobs, we pay particular attention to the increase in routine cognitive tasks, a trend distinguishing Central and Eastern European economies from the most advanced economies. We find that in all countries routine cognitive tasks were most common in the middle of wage distribution, but increasingly rare among the top earners. We identify two groups of workers whose jobs depend most on performing routine cognitive tasks: medium-skilled men in the manufacturing sectors and medium-skilled women in the service sectors, who jointly represent 33 per cent of Central and Eastern European workers. Should technological progress reduce demand for routine work in Central and Eastern Europe, a large proportion of workers would be affected and wage inequality would rise. We conclude with the policy implications of our findings.

Educational upgrading, structural change and the task composition of jobs in Europe

We analyze the changes in the task content of jobs in 24 European countries between 1998 and 2015. We link the O*NET occupational data with the European Union Labour Force Survey (EU†LFS), and use the methodology of Acemoglu and Autor (). We find that the intensity of non†routine cognitive tasks grew in all countries, while the intensity of manual tasks declined. Workforce upskilling was the major factor contributing to these developments. The intensity of routine cognitive tasks grew in most Central and Eastern European countries, but it declined in Western European countries. This difference is attributed to the contrasting patterns of structural changes in these groups of countries.

Job retention among older workers in central and Eastern Europe

ABSTRACT We study job retention rates – the shares of workers who continue to work in the same job over the next five years – in Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. Job retention among older workers is key to prolonging careers and increasing employment of older people which in turn is a crucial challenge for these countries. We find that the retention rates among workers aged 55–59 are low and amount to about a half of the retention rates among prime aged workers. Only in Poland the retention rates of older workers have increased for both men and women between 1998 and 2013. The individuals least likely to retain jobs after the age of 60 were women, those with lower education, working in industry, in medium or low-skilled occupations, and those living with a non-working partner. The policies aimed at encouraging job retention in Central and Eastern Europe should focus on these groups of workers.

Technology or Upskilling? Trends in the Task Composition of Jobs in Central and Eastern Europe

In this paper we analyse the changes in the task content of jobs in Central and Eastern European countries between 1998 and 2013. We link the O*NET data on occupational characteristics with EU-LFS, following the approach of Autor, Levy and Murnane (2003), and Acemoglu and Autor (2011). We find that the CEE countries witnessed similar trends of rising intensity of non-routine cognitive tasks, and a decreasing intensity of manual tasks, although they differed with regards to changes in the routine cognitive task content. We assess the relative role played by education and technology in the development of task contents. We also decompose the observed changes into the contributions of sectoral, educational and occupational changes as well as the interaction between them. Our results show that workforce upskilling was the major factor behind the evolution of non-routine cognitive and manual tasks in CEE, whereas structural changes and shifts towards work with lower speed of de-routinisation have shaped routine cognitive tasks.