How have the immediate school-to-work transition and the early career changed in different labour market entry regimes since the early 1980s? How do institutional frameworks differ with regard to insecurity perception? Ellen Ebralidze investigates these topics from a cross-national perspective while focusing on Denmark, the darling of flexicurity literature. The results show that in all the labour market entry regimes, the school-towork transition has become increasingly difficult, and flexible forms of work are more typical in the first job. Furthermore, the liberal institutional framework of the United States seems to produce a similarly low degree of job-loss worry among young people in their early career as the Danish paradigm.

How have immediate school-to-work transitions and early careers changed in different labor market entry regimes since the early 1980s? How do institutional frameworks differ with regard to insecurity perception? This book investigates these topics from a cross-national perspective while focusing on Denmark, the darling of flexicurity literature. The results show that in all the labor market entry regimes, the school-to-work transition has become increasingly difficult, and flexible forms of work are more typical in the first job. Furthermore, the liberal institutional framework of the United States seems to produce a similarly low degree of job-loss worry among young people in their early careers as does the Danish paradigm. Contents include: employment flexibilization and increasing economic insecurity at labor market entry * the role of institutional settings for shaping school-to-work transitions * the Danish flexicurity as a framework for labor market entry processes * insecurity experiences: the development of employment risks at labor market entry since the 1980s * insecurity perception: the translation of unemployment risks into job-loss worry in times of flexible employment.

Employment relations in advanced, post-industrial democracies have become increasingly insecure and uncertain as the risks associated with work are being shifted from employers and governments to workers. Arne L. Kalleberg examines the impact of the liberalization of labor markets and welfare systems on the growth of precarious work and job insecurity for indicators of well-being such as economic insecurity, the transition to adulthood, family formation, and happiness, in six advanced capitalist democracies: the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, Spain, and Denmark. This insightful cross-national analysis demonstrates how active labor market policies and generous social welfare systems can help to protect workers and give employers latitude as they seek to adapt to the rise of national and global competition and the rapidity of sweeping technological changes. Such policies thereby form elements of a new social contract that offers the potential for addressing many of the major challenges resulting from the rise of precarious work.

Underpinned by the fact that the globalization process and the subsequent increased level of market uncertainty have paved the way for employment flexibility in modern societies, this book examines the labor market chances of young adults in the US and in ten European societies over the past three decades. As young adults represent a very vulnerable labor market group, flexible and insecure employment tends to be pronounced especially at labor market entry. The contributors therefore explore which groups of young adults are especially affected by increasing employment insecurities.

This work is the result of a symposium focusing on the anxieties that arise from changes in the world of work in Europe. The book seeks to draw attention to the changing nature of work, trends in labour market policies and the increase in job insecurity, which creates chronic unemployment.

The promise of upward mobility—the notion that everyone has the chance to get ahead—is one of this country's most cherished ideals, a hallmark of the American Dream. But in today's volatile labor market, the tradition of upward mobility for all may be a thing of the past. In a competitive world of deregulated markets and demanding shareholders, many firms that once offered the opportunity for advancement to workers have remade themselves as leaner enterprises with more flexible work forces. Divergent Paths examines the prospects for upward mobility of workers in this changed economic landscape. Based on an innovative comparison of the fortunes of two generations of young, white men over the course of their careers, Divergent Paths documents the divide between the upwardly mobile and the growing numbers of workers caught in the low-wage trap. The first generation entered the labor market in the late 1960s, a time of prosperity and stability in the U.S. labor market, while the second generation started work in the early 1980s, just as the new labor market was being born amid recession, deregulation, and the weakening of organized labor. Tracking both sets of workers over time, the authors show that the new labor market is more volatile and less forgiving than the labor market of the 1960s and 1970s. Jobs are less stable, and the penalties for failing to find a steady employer are more severe for most workers. At the top of the job pyramid, the new nomads—highly credentialed, well-connected workers—regard each short-term project as a springboard to a better-paying position, while at the bottom, a growing number of retail workers, data entry clerks, and telemarketers, are consigned to a succession of low-paying, dead-end jobs. While many commentators dismiss public anxieties about job insecurity as overblown, Divergent Paths carefully documents hidden trends in today's job market which confirm many of the public's fears. Despite the celebrated job market of recent years, the authors show that the old labor market of the 1960s and 1970s propelled more workers up the earnings ladder than does today's labor market. Divergent Paths concludes with a discussion of policy strategies, such as regional partnerships linking corporate, union, government, and community resources, which may help repair the career paths that once made upward mobility a realistic ambition for all American workers.

Featuring new findings and fresh insights from an international roster of labor economists, this book delves into a wide range of high-profile labor issues affecting youth in the US, Europe and Japan, from declining job, wage and training prospects to workplace health hazards, immigration, union activism and new policy strategies.