Category: labour market policy

Welfare Chauvinism or Cash-Benefit Chauvinism?

by Gianna Maria Eick and Christian Albrekt Larsen

Particularly the Covid-19 crisis has demonstrated migrant workers’ key role in the functioning of European labour markets and services. The crisis has also exposed many migrants’ interlinked vulnerabilities, including their concentration in precarious work, thinner financial safety nets, and insecure social rights. Still, in political and public debates, migrants’ are often framed as a threat to European countries, and they have already lost social rights in some countries in recent years. In this context, welfare chauvinism, the attitude that migrants should be excluded from social rights, increasingly polarises the continent.

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Automation and workfare support

by Zhen Im and Kathrin Komp-Leukkunen

Do automation-threatened workers support workfare? As automation permeates the workplace, this question becomes increasingly relevant. Although automation-threatened workers prefer more generous income redistribution to compensate for potential economic loss, we know less about their views on workfare. This gap is concerning due to changes in social policy orientation among European governments under the pressure of fiscal austerity.

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Female-breadwinner families on the breadline

By Helen Kowalewska and Agnese Vitali

Since the 1990s, there has been a rise in the number of households in which women are working more hours than their male partners across the UK and other advanced economies. Female breadwinners are often stereotyped as career-oriented, empowered, and high-earning women. However, our study suggests this is often not the case.

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When inclusive measures expose cracks: The Nordic Social Protection in times of crisis

By Trine P. Larsen and Anna Ilsøe

The Nordic economies were – similar to the rest of Europe – hit hard by the Corona pandemic with historical drops in GDP and rising unemployment in the first two quarters of 2020. Non-standard workers were particularly hard hit. Many worked in the most crisis-ridden sectors such as tourism, hotel and restaurant. To help companies and workers, including non-standard workers, to cope with the COVID-19 crisis, the Nordic governments launched more than 130 ad hoc relief packages and amendments in their social protection schemes, often in close collaboration with social partners and with broad support of other political parties. However, certain groups, notably temporary employed, entrepreneurs, freelancers and part-time workers with few hours continued to fall through the cracks in the system despite the ongoing adjustments of the unprecedented policy responses, and more so in some Nordic countries than others.

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Inequality in employment during the Corona lockdown: Evidence from Germany

By Katja Möhring, Elias Naumann, Maximiliane Reifenscheid, Annelies G. Blom, Alexander Wenz, Tobias Rettig, Roni Lehrer, Ulrich Krieger, Sebastian Juhl, Sabine Friedel, Marina Fikel, and Carina Cornesse

The Coronavirus crisis and the related lockdown measures had a devastating impact on the economies and labour markets of the affected countries. In Germany, lockdown measures were initiated in mid-March and included immediate closure of public facilities, restaurants, shops, theatres etc. on March, 22nd the latest. Due to the following collapse of domestic demand and exports, more sectors than hospitality and retail were affected.

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