The activities performed by Canadian workers in some occupations may increase the risk of exposure to infectious diseases such as COVID‐19. This research note explores how occupational exposure risks vary by labor force characteristics using publicly available Canadian data in combination with a data set providing information on the level of physical proximity and frequency of exposure to infections or diseases faced by workers in different occupations. The results show important sociodemographic differences. First, women work in occupations associated with significantly higher average risks of exposure to COVID‐19 than men. This is driven by their overrepresentation in high‐risk broad occupational categories such as health occupations. Second, older workers (65 years or more), a group vulnerable to COVID‐19, appear to work in occupations requiring performing activities characterized by a lower level of physical proximity than their younger colleagues, with minimal differences in the frequency of exposure to diseases or infections. Finally, workers in low‐income occupations are employed in occupations that put them at greater risk of exposure to COVID‐19 than other workers. This is especially the case for women, immigrants, and members of visible minority groups in low‐income occupations. More broadly, this research note provides insights into the health‐related dimension of the literature on occupational tasks and labor market stratification.

Canadian children experience a high level of intergenerational income mobility compared with US children. Moreover, their physical and mental health outcomes, school readiness, and post-secondary attendance are all less tightly associated with parental outcomes than in the United States. In this article, we investigate the role played by children’s education in the intergenerational transmission of income in Canada. Existing research has produced macro-level estimates of mobility to draw comparisons over time and across places and has studied the micro-level mechanisms that underlie the relationship between parents’ and children’s outcomes. However, evidence on the extent to which the different factors investigated drive the broader numbers is still limited. To remedy this, we exploit the Longitudinal and International Study of Adults, a rich panel of integrated survey and administrative data covering 1982–2013. We estimate that the education level of children accounts for 40.5–50.1 percent of the correlation between their income and their parents’, similar to the United States. Moreover, we discuss evidence suggesting that the greater mobility of Canadian children is linked not only to their lower returns to education but also to the weaker association between their education and their parents’ income. Finally, we find that almost half of the effect linked to education is associated with the skills respondents use at work, such as reading or communication.

The literature on flexibilization documents the decline of the standard employment relationships, resulting in greater job insecurity. Consequently, the stability of career trajectories is expected to have decreased. However, existing studies in many countries pose a significant challenge: the available evidence shows no clear downward trend and possibly even an increase in job stability since the 1970s, as measured by trends in job tenure duration or job separations. This article highlights important limitations of such studies and provides novel evidence on the transformation of career trajectories. It is the first to provide evidence of a decrease in average job tenure duration for men in Canada and a decrease in five-year and 10-year retention rates over the four decades between 1976 and 2015, adjusting for sociodemographic shifts unrelated to flexibilization. We also find that average job tenure has increased for women, while their long-term job retention rates declined.

The activities performed by Canadian workers in some occupations may increase the risk of exposure to infectious diseases such as COVID-19. This research note explores how occupational exposure risks vary by labour force characteristics using publicly available Canadian data in combination with a dataset providing information on the level of physical proximity and frequency of exposure to infections or diseases faced by workers in different occupations. I find important sociodemographic differences. First, women work in occupations associated with significantly higher average risks of exposure to COVID-19 than men. This is driven by their over-representation in high-risk broad occupational categories such as health occupations. Second, older workers (65 years old or more), a group vulnerable to COVID-19, appear to work in occupations requiring performing activities that require a lower level of physical proximity than their younger colleagues, with minimal differences in the frequency of exposure to diseases or infections. Finally, workers in low-income occupations are employed in occupations that put them at greater risk of exposure to COVID-19 than other workers. This is especially the case for women, immigrants and members of visible minority groups in low-income occupations. More broadly, this research note provides insights into the health-related dimension of the literature on occupational tasks and labour market stratification.

This study provides novel evidence on trends in job stability in the United Kingdom and Germany, two capitalist economies with distinct sets of institutions and labour market reform trajectories. While we find evidence of an increase in short‐term jobs for men in both countries, we also find important differences in the overall patterns of change in the distribution of job tenure duration. The United Kingdom follows a masked instability pattern with opposite job stability trends for men and women. On the other hand, we find evidence of a polarization of the job tenure distribution among men and women in Germany. These findings are partly consistent with expectations from the dualization literature, emphasizing a growing segmentation of the labour market between insiders and outsiders. More generally, this study highlights the existence of multiple paths towards increased job instability that appear to be rooted in institutional differences.