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Archive: IAB-Veranstaltungen

Bei der Fachtagung „Wissenschaft trifft Praxis“ zum Thema „Betriebliche Herausforderungen vor, während und nach der COVID-19-Krise“ diskutieren Expertinnen und Experten aus Wissenschaft und Wirtschaft mit Vertreterinnen und Vertretern der Politik, den Sozialpartnern und der Öffentlichkeit über Potenziale und Schwierigkeiten, denen sich Betriebe – auch angesichts der anhaltenden COVID-19-Krise – in unserer Arbeitswelt gegenübersehen. Die Veranstaltung möchte auf Basis aktueller Forschungsergebnisse und Erfahrungen aus der Praxis den gegenwärtigen Zustand der Betriebe in Deutschland reflektieren, um daraus ableitbare Handlungsoptionen für die Politik zur Diskussion zu stellen.

The conference focuses on technology, trade, and demographic changes and the ways they interact with employment, wages, and participation in the labor market, with a particular emphasis on the role of institutions and on labor markets during the COVID-19 crisis. Understanding these relationships is key in assessing the performance of the labor market and for the design of effective labor market policies. We invite empirical and theoretical contributions on these topics from all areas of economics and sociology with a focus on labor, education, health, or human resource management.

The conference will be held in-person. It is sponsored by the German Research Foundation (DFG) as part of the Priority Program 1764 “The German Labor Market in a Globalized World” and will also mark the end of the program.

Es ist eine Furcht, die nicht nur die Unternehmen umtreibt: Deutschland drohen auf breiter Front die Arbeitskräfte wegzubrechen. Schon jetzt herrschen in vielen Bereichen Engpässe. Mit 1,69 Millionen erreichte die Zahl der offenen Stellen bereits im vierten Quartal 2021 – also mitten in der Corona-Krise – ein Allzeithoch. Dabei steht uns die volle Wucht des demografischen Wandels erst noch bevor. Denn es gehen sehr viel mehr Ältere in Rente, als Jüngere nachrücken – eine Schere, die sich in den nächsten Jahren immer weiter öffnet. So umfasst der geburtenstärkste Jahrgang – 1964 – derzeit knapp 1,4 Millionen Menschen. Zum Vergleich: Bei den 2011 Geborenen, dem bislang geburtenschwächsten Jahrgang, sind es nur gut 700.000. „Wir werden vom demografischen Wandel überrollt“, fürchtet denn auch Daniel Terzenbach, Vorstandsmitglied der Bundesagentur für Arbeit (BA). Zugleich braucht Deutschland mehr Fachkräfte denn je: So sollen in naher Zukunft Abertausende von Solardächern montiert, Windrädern aufgestellt und Wohnungen neu gebaut oder energetisch saniert werden. Wer soll Ältere und Kranke pflegen? Doch woher sollen all die Arbeitskräfte kommen? Die Klimawende – und nicht nur sie – droht am Personalmangel zu scheitern. Die Herausforderungen sind ebenso zahlreich wie schwierig: Wie können Ältere länger im Erwerbsleben gehalten werden? Wie schaffen wir es, dass Frauen ihre Arbeitszeit erhöhen? Wie lassen sich die vielen Langzeitarbeitslosen wieder in Lohn und Brot bringen? Wie kann Inklusion im Arbeitsmarkt verbessert werden? Doch selbst wenn all dies gelingen sollte – es wird nicht reichen. Es braucht deutlich mehr (qualifizierte) Zuwanderung als bisher, laut BA-Chef Detlef Scheele 400.000 mehr Zuzüge als Fortzüge – und dies jedes Jahr. Doch wie kann Deutschland mehr begehrte Arbeitskräfte aus dem Ausland anlocken, um die heimischen Lücken zu füllen? Hinzu kommt: Jahr für Jahr kehrte eine Million Menschen unserem Land den Rücken. Wie lassen sich diese Menschen dazu motivieren, in Deutschland zu bleiben? Diese und weitere Fragen wollen wir mit Expertinnen und Experten aus Politik, Wirtschaft, Wissenschaft und Arbeitsverwaltung diskutieren.

Logo LISER - Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research

With the COVID-19 pandemic in its third year, the question how the former has affected labour markets and economic policies continues to be of prime importance. Has the pandemic led to lasting changes in the organization of work? Which workers, firms or regions will benefit from such changes? Thus far, research has mainly focussed on the pandemic’s initial impact. Much less is known about its effects in the medium run and if early adjustments have turned into permanent changes. As more data is becoming available, it is now possible to assess how individual labour market biographies have been affected; how firms adapted to disruptions in their production processes; how the effects of the pandemic differed between regions, sectors or occupations; and whether certain policies have been changed permanently as a result of the crisis. The purpose of this workshop is to bring together researchers to present and discuss current work on the labour market consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.

  1. How have individual labour market biographies been affected by the pandemic?
  2. Do pandemic effects differ between groups of individuals and have there been changes in labour market inequality?
  3. Has the pandemic led to labour market scarring?
  4. How have school-to-work transitions, entries into training or transitions from training into employment been affected?
  5. How has the allocation of household or care tasks changed during the pandemic?
  6. Has occupational mobility changed as a result of the pandemic?
  7. How have firms responded to the pandemic?
  8. How has the adoption of working-from-home schemes affected firms’ production processes?
  9. Has the pandemic led to more investment in digital technologies and how has this affected the workers at the firm?
  10. Has occupation- or task-specific labour demand changed during the pandemic?
  11. How has short-term work been used during the pandemic?
  12. Have firms adjusted their (international) supply chains?
  13. Have urban labour markets become less attractive?
  14. Have regional labour market disparities increased as a result of the pandemic?

The Covid crisis revived the interest in the topic of short-time work (sometimes also known as furlough schemes or work sharing). In many countries, the schemes were utilised in unprecendented ways. The Institute for Employment Research organises a one-day online workshop on May 13, 2022 that focuses on current research on short-time work. Contributions may address the Covid crisis or previous economic crises. Both theoretical and applied papers with both micro- and macroeconomic approaches are welcome.

The workshop provides the opportunity for timely exchange on cutting-edge research on a specific topic. Presentations and discussions should spur the debate on usage, effects and design of a crucial labour market instrument.

COVID-19 drove a mass social experiment in working from home (WFH). We survey more than 30,000 Americans over multiple waves to investigate whether WFH will stick, and why. Our data say that 20 percent of full workdays will be supplied from home after the pandemic ends, compared with just 5 percent before. We develop evidence on five reasons for this large shift: better-than-expected WFH experiences, new investments in physical and human capital that enable WFH, greatly diminished stigma associated with WFH, lingering concerns about crowds and contagion risks, and a pandemic-driven surge in technological innovations that support WFH. We also use our survey data to project three consequences: First, employees will enjoy large benefits from greater remote work, especially those with higher earnings. Second, the shift to WFH will directly reduce spending in major city centers by at least 5-10 percent relative to the pre-pandemic situation. Third, our data on employer plans and the relative productivity of WFH imply a 5 percent productivity boost in the post-pandemic economy due to re-optimized working arrangements. Only one-fifth of this productivity gain will show up in conventional productivity measures, because they do not capture the time savings from less commuting.

We investigate the role of information frictions in the US labor market using a new nationally representative panel dataset on individuals' labor market expectations and realizations. We find that expectations about future job offers are, on average, highly predictive of actual outcomes. Despite their predictive power, however, deviations of ex post realizations from ex ante expectations are often sizable. The panel aspect of the data allows us to study how individuals update their labor market expectations in response to such shocks. We find a strong response: an individual who receives a job offer one dollar above her expectation subsequently adjusts her expectations upward by $0.47. We embed the empirical evidence on expectations and learning into a model of search on- and off- the job with learning, and show that it is far better able to fit the data on reservation wages relative to a model that assumes complete information. We use the framework to gauge the welfare costs of information frictions which arise because individuals make uninformed job acceptance decisions and find that the costs due to information frictions are sizable, but mitigated by the presence of learning.

Die großen Transformationen der Arbeitswelt sind nicht nur voll im Gange, die „Zukunft der Arbeit“ ist bereits in der Gegenwart angekommen. Die Corona-Pandemie hat der Arbeitswelt einen noch nie dagewesenen Digitalisierungsschub verliehen, der aller Voraussicht nach unumkehrbar ist. Wie gehen wir mit den neuen Realitäten um?
Arbeit ist in vielen Bereichen unabhängig von Zeit und Ort geworden. Homeoffice, mobiles Arbeiten oder auch neuartige Formen der Selbständigkeit stehen beispielhaft für die großen Herausforderungen, die sich aus dem digitalen Umbruch der Arbeitswelt für die Gesellschaft ergeben.Von Seiten der Unternehmen eröffnen sich Chancen und zeitgleich Risiken, was Produktivität, Engagement und Mitarbeiterbindung angeht. Welche Anreize müssen geschaffen werden, um den Betrieb als sozialen Ort zu erhalten? Flexible Arbeitszeitregelungen und -modelle bergen neues Konfliktpotential zwischen Personal und Leitung, aber auch innerhalb der Belegschaft angesichts der Heterogenität der Aufgabenfelder. Welche Konsequenzen hat dies auf Vergütungsmodelle? Wie verändert sich die Interessensvertretung in den Betrieben? Was sind die Implikationen des hybriden Arbeitens für das Arbeitsrecht? Diesen und weiteren Fragen gehen international renommierte Experten aus Wissenschaft, Politik und der unternehmerischen Praxis in der Akademie am Starnberger See nach. Sie sind herzlich dazu eingeladen, mit zu diskutieren.

Social science research demonstrates that dispersal policies and restrictions on the freedom of residence have inhibited refugees’ socio-economic integration, presumably because such policies prevent refugees from moving to places where they can employ their skills most fruitfully. However, studies of refugees’ actual residential choices provide little evidence that good economic prospects attract refugees, and some even suggest that refugees often move to deprived cities with frail labor markets. The combination of negative effects of residence restrictions and emerging evidence of disadvantaging secondary migration forms what we call the ‘refugee mobility puzzle’. In this study, we aim at unpacking this puzzle by analyzing the inner-German migration patterns of recent refugees. Specifically, we ask: What attracts refugees to deprived areas, and can their seemingly unfortunate residential choices be understood as moves to opportunity and increased prospects of labor market integration after all? Empirically, we draw on the IAB-BAMF-SOEP Survey of Refugees and track the location of more than 2,000 refugee respondents who were exogenously allocated a place of residence and subsequently became free to move. Based on linear-probability discrete choice models across all German counties and postcodes, we confirm that refugees tend to move to areas with high unemployment. We show that major attractors like housing availability, co-ethnic networks, and service-oriented labor markets are clustered in areas with high unemployment. Taken together, our results complicate recent critiques of dispersal policies and restrictions. On the one hand, our findings show that seemingly disadvantaging relocations into high unemployment areas can conceal potentially improved economic perspectives in relevant labor markets. On the other hand, refugees’ search for affordable housing may turn into an unintended lock-in factor in the mid- and long-run.

This paper studies the interplay between how much workers value workplace flexibility, whether they have such amenities, and how the presence of amenities affects their wages. To overcome the challenge of eliciting quantitative measures of willingness to pay (WTP) at the individual level, we propose the use of dynamic choice experiments, a method which we call the Bayesian Adaptive Choice Experiment (BACE). We implement this method to collect data on the joint distribution of wages, work arrangements, and WTP for different forms of flexibility. We then introduce and estimate a model in which workers may face different prices for job amenities depending on their productivity, extending the Rosen (1986) model of compensating differentials. The model captures key patterns in the data, including (i) the relationship between wages and having amenities, (ii) inequality in workplace amenities across the earnings distribution even when workers value these amenities similarly, and (iii) the tradeoffs across different forms of flexibility. We use the estimates to explore the welfare consequences of workers facing different amenity prices.