Labour market and education

Labour market and education

  • Labour market structures and dynamics
  • Labour market institutions and pay schemes
  • Skills and effectiveness of education policy

The research of the Labour Market and Education Economics program focuses on the structures and dynamics of the labour market. The continuation of the fundamental restructuring of the labour market in tandem with the prolonged economic downturn is reflected in the labour market’s institutions and pay schemes. It has induced changes in the structure and mobility of labour, as well as in career development and, ultimately, in wage and income inequalities. The effects and consequences of labour market restructuring are empirically evaluated particularly from the perspective of the role of skills for labour market success, with emphasis on flexible and adequate provision of education and training over an individual’s entire working career. Policy analysis is focused on the evaluation of the effectiveness of education and labour market policies.

The research questions addressed in the Program highlight comprehensively the change in job structures and the functioning of the labour market, especially from the perspective of development needs of the educational and labour market institutions as well as pay schemes. Key topics of research are also how to reduce the risk of unemployment and labour market exclusion.

All projects make extensive use of broad-based longitudinal register datasets mainly gathered and merged by Statistics Finland. In addition, these databases are supplemented whenever necessary by information compiled in various types of special datasets as well as by examining individual companies. The research is based on the state-of-the-art models and methodology applied in these fields of study.

Personnel of the research group

Selected research

Research began 2020 Research ends 2021

Is it worth investing in adult education?

Hundreds of millions of euros are spend on adult education in Finland each year. In Finland it is hardly known whether adult education is improving employment, adapting to job revolution or development of earnings. This project is extensively exploring
Research began 2020 Research ends 2020

Meta-analysis of the effectiveness of labor policy

Achieving the government’s 75% employment target requires decisive action to improve employment. Increasing the employment rate will only be successful if the measures taken are effective. Such measures may relate to active labor market policies, unemployment schemes, invalidity benefit
Research began 2019 Research ends 2021

Urban Growth – GSIP Vantaa

Urban Growth - GSIP Vantaa (Growth and Social Investment Pacts (GSIP) for Local Companies in the City of Vantaa) is an EU Urban Innovative Actions (UIA) initiative that aims at improving employees’ skills at companies with low-skilled workforce. GSIPs
Research began 2017 Research ends 2021

Promotions, Wages, and Worker Mobility across Firms

The objective of this proposal is to go beyond the prior literature on career and wage dynamics by studying the interplay between within-firm careers and job mobility, which is an important unexplored area in the field of personnel economics.
Research began 2018 Research ends 2020

The effect of regional availability of upper secondary education

We seek to understand how institutional factors in the supply of education affect the upper-secondary education choices of individuals, their educational attainment, and labor market outcomes later in their careers. We exploit the variation in the education supply over
Research began 2016 Research ended 2017

Student selection to higher education and speeding up studies

An aim of the project was to study how applying and access to higher education have changed as a consequence of the student selection reforms and other policy action related to the aim of speeding up studies and, whether
Research began 2017 Research ended 2018

The effects of wage subsidies on the employability and employment

The aim of the project has been to comprehensively evaluate the impact of wage subsidies on unemployed persons’ subsequent employment and earnings, whereby the focus has been on the system of wage subsidies in place in the early 2010s
Research began 2016 Research ended 2019

Occupational restructuring challenges competencies

The central idea of the research is to comprehensively assess the role of competencies - their acquisition, maintenance, development and renewal - in enhancing successful labour market transition, as well as stabilized employment and re-entry after non-employment in times
Research began 2016 Research ended 2019

Better late than never?

Better late than never? School, training and work for late upper secondary school completers in the Nordic countries is a comparative Nordic study concerning young people who do not complete upper secondary schooling on regular time. The primary goal
Research began 2016 Research ended 2017

The effect of education on crime and labor market outcomes

This study examined how the admission success to upper secondary education and participation in the post-compulsory schooling affect crime behavior and labor market outcomes. Each year almost five percent of the cohort graduating from compulsory education fails to receive
Research began 2015 Research ended 2017

Workplace innovations, productivity, and employee well-being

The aim of this research project was to evaluate the impact of high involvement management that stresses the importance of worker autonomy on both firm performance and various measures of subjective well-being at work. Management styles are an important
Research began 2012 Research ended 2017

Career and wage dynamics within and between firms

The fields of personnel and organizational economics have started to develop and test models of the internal workings of firms, paying particular attention to careers within firms. This project took a new approach on career and wage dynamics by

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