The past decade and a half has seen tremendous research growth in the area of job displacement. This paper discusses the state of knowledge on the issues and questions of job loss. The 1984-96 Displaced Worker Surveys are used to describe how the characteristics of displacement are changing to include more college educated, white collar, and nonmanufacturing workers. For many workers, the long-term earnings losses following displacement are large due to the loss of firm-specific human capital. More research is needed on the questions of the causes of job displacement and on the efficacy of employment and training programs.
The topic for this editorial is one that until now has been discussed only occasionally in QRE International. However, although the journal has concentrated on publishing papers related to the design, production, and maintenance of physical products, it is perhaps time to also address the quality and reliability of the services offered to consumers today.If we were to make a survey of the type of quality problems that beset the average person in his or her working life, I believe that the 'quality of services' will get a high score. For those who use the PC and the Internet in their daily work, you will surely get complaints about time wasted when Web site addresses are out-of-date or inaccessible. You will hear of time spent on inputting information to Web site registration forms, only to see the information inexplicably erased at the end of the session. You will hear, for example, rail ticket prices on the Internet quoted many times higher than at your local ticket office, contrary to the popular idiom that Internet prices are lower than those offered elsewhere.Other problems relating to the quality of services include the appallingly poor responses often given on telephone help lines, or the frustrations of being talked through any number of options, except the one you need, on an automated telephone service.Mail order services have become commonplace, but all too many companies rely on the customer being available at home to take delivery of a package between nine and five Monday through Friday.The list of everyday examples on poor quality of services is seemingly inexhaustible. The point is that there seems to be a sector, or several sectors of the business world, where the advances in quality and reliability that we have seen in the technical fields have had little or no impact. The beauty of many of the quality tools that we have witnessed being put into use over the past 20 years or so is that they are very flexible. A philosophy such as that of six-sigma, with its statistical underpinnings, can be applied with equal success to the manufacture of automobile generators or office printers, or to the supply and delivery of plastic granulates or electronic components.Some major service corporations have indeed taken six-sigma and other timely techniques on board. It would be interesting to hear of the experiences from these companies.
Coincident with the broadening of global economic integration from manufacturing to services, the face of job displacement in the United States is changing. While manufacturing workers have historically accounted for more than half of displaced workers, nonmanufacturing workers accounted for 70 percent of displaced workers over 2001-03. 1 The share of job loss accounted for by workers displaced from information, financial services, and professional and business services nearly tripled-from 15 percent during the 1979-82 recession to 43 percent over 2001-03. The industrial and occupational shift in job loss has been associated with a rise in the probability of job loss for more-educated workers. 2 Bringing these two trends together, the changing mix of industries exposed to international trade in services may have deep implications for the structure of US industry and labor markets in the future.Currently, there is little clear understanding of the role of services globalization in domestic employment change and job loss. More fundamentally, there is little clear understanding of the size and extent of services offshoring, how large it is likely to become in the near-term future, or its impact on the US economy.Fueled by the 2004 presidential race and continued slack in the labor market, the services offshoring debate became headline material. The literature on services offshoring is expanding rapidly. Recent
Using NLSY data, the authors estimate the long-term costs of job displacement for young adults. Earnings and wage losses were large for the first three years following displacement.Compared to earnings losses found by other studies for more mature workers, however, earnings losses for these young adults were short-lived, with differences between observed and expected earnings narrowing considerably five years after job loss. At that point, the shortfall in annual earnings (relative to what would have been expected absent job loss) was 9% for men and 12.5% for women, and the shortfall in hourly wages was 21.2% for men. Young workers also apparently differ from more established workers in the composition of total earnings losses: for older workers, total losses largely represent actual, immediate earnings losses, whereas for young workers the loss of opportunities for rapid earnings growth is more important.
This article examines how one form of transferable skills, those valued within an industry or sector, may influence reemployment and earnings following permanent job loss. The empirical analysis finds limited evidence of a sector‐specific component to the returns to job tenure. The importance of these skills varies across sectors, with the strongest evidence found for sectors with sustained labor demand and growing employment. There is stronger evidence, particularly in reemployment, for a broader form of sector specificity that is not related to tenure, such as job search skills and vocational training. There is also sectoral evidence that is consistent with the role of individual ability in the returns to tenure.
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