Industrial and Labor Relations Review

Concerns over the supply of skills in the U.S. labor force, especially education-related skills, have exploded in recent years with a series of reports not only from employer-associated organizations but also from independent and even government sources making similar claims. These complaints about …

Young people have been among those most affected by the recent financial crisis. Vocational education and training (VET) is often viewed as the silver bullet for the youth joblessness problem. In this article, the authors provide a better understanding of VET in industrialized countries, proposing a…

Although interest in monopsonistic influences on labor market outcomes has revived in recent years, only a few empirical studies provide direct evidence on this topic. In this article, the authors analyze the effect of monopsony power on pay structure, using a direct measure of labor market thinness…

Data from the German Socio-Economic Panel are used to examine the experiences of German workers following job displacement due to plant closure. In the year of displacement, annual earnings declined by about 13.5%, and the typical worker experienced between 6 and 10 additional days of annual unemplo…

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel for 1984-90, the author analyzes the entrance of young individuals into the German labor market, comparing the experience of apprenticeship graduates to that of graduates from universities, full-time vocational schools, and secondary schools. Apprentic…