Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: In this paper we seek to understand women’s responses to spousal unemployment. Using data collected from 29 in-depth interviews with the wives of unemployed steelworkers we examine how both economic conditions and gender schema influence the decisions men and women make regarding employment. We find that employment decisions are constrained by gender due to the gendered nature of individuals, work, and family. We first describe the development of the status of women in the workplace, the added worker effect, and the current literature on gender. Using excerpts from the interviews conducted we then describe how the employment options of women are severely limited by economic conditions, family responsibilities, and access to favorable wages. We also explore initial coping strategies to unemployment, specifically addressing the use of domestic production as a cost-saving technique and alternative to the increased labor force participation of the wife. We also explore the constraints caused by gender schema and a gendered division of labor. We conclude that although a woman may want to increase her labor force participation to help ameliorate the financial effects of job loss on her family, she may be unable to do so because of an unfavorable economy, work conditions, and powerful gender logics that influence the appropriateness of solutions.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: When job loss occurs, income is not the only thing to suffer. Social status and respectability are central elements of the reward system in economic life. Drawing on the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, I use a Fixed Effects model to study the consequence of entering and exiting unemployment. After controlling for income loss, there remains a large social-psychological effect. Economic theory treats unemployment as equivalent to “time off work.” However, these findings indicate that five weeks of unemployment is quite different from a 35-day weekend. The effect of unemployment is not uniform. In particular, people with family responsibilities find unemployment especially distressing. For those without such responsibilities, the effect of unemployment is smaller and only weakly significant. Rather than a generic “work ethic,” there seems to be a “provider ethic.” This seems like an important subtlety that has escaped sociological attention. It also suggests a modest way of improving the generosity of unemployment insurance, without sacrificing work incentives.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper addresses the ability and willingness of unions to protect and further the interests of the unemployed. As a highly vulnerable group, with an unstable, permeable and involuntary membership, the unemployed face serious mobilization obstacles as an interest group in its own right. Not surprisingly, therefore, the unemployed seldom emerge as a significant political force in its own right. Under the protective umbrella of unions, however, the unemployed can gain benefits that otherwise would be difficult to secure and, perhaps more importantly, the unions can prevent the precariously employed from becoming unemployed. And yet, the relationship between unions and the unemployed is precarious, leading to different mobilization patterns in different contexts. The analytical goal of this paper is to reveal the processes by which political actors, in this case unions and the unemployed, come to understand who they are, what interests they have, and what sociopolitical options are available and/or desirable to them and, and to link these processes to the political and organizational context of more or less successful mobilization efforts. Data comes from a larger study of claimsmaking in the field of unemployment in six European nations: France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Shifts in the nation's unemployment rate, as traditionally calculated, are caused not only by changes in labor productivity, foreign competition, aggregate demand, and business cycle movements but also by changes in the age distribution of the labor force. Unemployment rates differ substantially by age. Younger national populations tend to have higher overall unemployment rates because of the concentration of the labor force in younger, higher unemployment age categories. Since 1960 the age structure of the U.S. labor force has changed dramatically due to the aging of the baby boom generation and the growth of the elderly labor force. Failure to take these age shifts into account results in a distorted comparison of unemployment rates at different historical periods. Similarly, comparisons of unemployment levels in different nations are misleading to the degree that the nations being compared have substantially different labor force age distributions. I am proposing an age-adjusted unemployment rate which eliminates the effect of changes in the age distribution. I would calculate such an age-adjusted unemployment rate for the U.S. for each year from 1960 through 2002 and compare changes in unemployment since 1960 as measured by this age-adjusted measure to changes as measured by the traditional unemployment measure.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In most OECD countries a worker must complete a qualifying period within a statutory base period to be eligible for unemployment benefits. Economic research indicates that the amount and duration of unemployment benefits can increase unemployment. To analyze the effects of the qualifying period and the base period on the equilibrium rate of unemployment, we use a matching model with an endogenous separation rate to show that there is a trade-off between the eligibility parameters and the benefit parameters. A country that combines a high level of unemployment benefits with a long benefit duration can neutralize the effect on the unemployment rate with a long qualifying period and/or a short base period.