Stefan Sacchi

Labour market structures and women’s employment levels

With the rise in women’s part-time work in many Western industrialised countries, a better understanding of women’s employment decisions necessitates the distinction between different employment levels and varying structural opportunities that facilitate or hinder female employment. This article analyses for Switzerland how structural factors affect women’s decisions to work marginal part-time, substantial par t-time, full-time or to stay out of the labour force. The analyses are based on the Swiss Labour Force Survey. The logistic regression findings show that labour market and firm-related opportunity structures affect the three types of employment levels differently. They also play a much larger role in the probability of working marginal part-time than in that of working substantial part-time or full-time.

Long-Term Dynamics of Skill Demand in Switzerland, 1950–2000

Our contribution investigates long-term shifts in skill demand in Switzerland with respect to both the level of formal skills and the type of occupational certificate. The former represents the most obvious ‘vertical’ dimension of changing job requirements, whereas the latter, no less important in a highly segmented labour market, reflects the ‘horizontal’ differentiation along occu- pational lines. We argue that two sources are responsible for any change in the aggregate composition of skill demand: The shifting sectoral composition of the economy and the intra-sectoral adaptations related to new technologies and the changing work organization. Against this background, we assess the relative impact of inter- and intra-sectoral change on the long-term trends in skill demand. We apply novel indicators of technological change within sectors to account for the latter. The empirical analyses are based on a representative random sample of job advertisements published between 1950 and the year 2000 in the German-speaking part of Switzerland.

8. LABOR-MARKET STRUCTURES AND WOMEN’S PAID WORK: OPPORTUNITIES AND CONSTRAINTS IN THE SWISS LABOR MARKET

Abstract Previous research on women’s changing work patterns has greatly neglected the ways in which the work context shapes their profiles of labor-force participation. By paying attention to job characteristics and working conditions, we discuss the opportunities and constraints associated with emerging new work patterns. Based on an empirical study conducted in Switzerland, we provide evidence that opportunities for continuous employment and labor-force re-entry after quitting paid work greatly vary with job characteristics and working conditions. Areas of further research are discussed and the implications are shown for policies at the firm level.

How unemployment scarring affects skilled young workers: evidence from a factorial survey of Swiss recruiters

We ask how employers contribute to unemployment scarring in the recruitment process in the German-speaking part of Switzerland. By drawing on recruitment theories, we aim to better understand how recruiters assess different patterns of unemployment in a job candidate’s CV and how this affects the chances of young applicants being considered for a vacancy. We argue that in contexts with tight school-work linkage and highly standardised Vocational Education and Training systems, the detrimental effect of early unemployment depends on how well the applicant’s profile matches the requirements of the advertised position. To test this assumption, we surveyed Swiss recruiters who were seeking to fill positions during the time of data collection. We employed a factorial survey experiment that tested how the (un)employment trajectories in hypothetical young job applicants’ CV affected their chances of being considered for a real vacancy. Our results show that unemployment decreases the perceived suitability of an applicant for a specific job, which implies there is a scarring effect of unemployment that increases with the duration of being unemployed. But we also found that these effects are moderated by how well the applicant’s profile matches the job’s requirements. Overall, the worse the match between applicant’s profile and the job profile, the smaller are the scarring effects of unemployment. In sum, our findings contribute to the literature by revealing considerable heterogeneity in the scarring effects of unemployment. Our findings further suggest that the scarring effects of unemployment need to be studied with regard to country-specific institutional settings, the applicants’ previous education and employment experiences, and the job characteristics.

Zur Differenzierung von Berufsverläufen

Schon seit einigen Jahren ist in den Sozialwissenschaften eine rege Diskussion uber Wandlungen von Lebenslaufmustern in fortgeschrittenen Industrielandern in Gang. Insbesondere in der deutschsprachigen Soziologie erfreuen sich Themen wie Individualisierung, Deinstitutionalisierung und Destandardisierung des Lebenslaufs einer grosen Beliebtheit (u.a. Beck 1986; Beck/Beck-Gernsheim 1993; Brose/Hildenbrand (Hg.) 1988; Buchmann 1989a, b; Burkart 1993a, b; Heinz (Hg.) 1991a, b; Held 1986; Kohli 1985, 1986; Mayer (Hg.) 1990; Mayer/Muller 1989; Mayer et al. 1991; Rindfuss et al. 1987; Weymann (Hg.) 1989; Wohlrab-Sahr 1992). Dabei fallt in theoretischer Hinsicht auf, das die genannten Konzepte, die zur Beschreibung des angeblich tiefgreifenden Strukturwandels des Lebensverlaufs dienen, sehr unterschiedlich und haufiig auch sehr unklar verwendet werden. Oft fehlt ein theoretischer Bezugsrahmen, so das dem Gebrauch dieser Begriffe eine gewisse Beliebigkeit anhaftet. Dies trifft auch auf die empirischen Sachverhalte zu, welche diese Begriffe zu bezeichnen pflegen.