Friday, April 15, 2016
Aria A (DoubleTree by Hilton Philadelphia Center City)
The Decent Jobs Project is designed to examine a dimension of post-1980 US labor market performance that has had profound effects on many American households -- the proliferation of lousy jobs, especially for young workers. We identify lousy jobs as those paid very low hourly wages or with inadequate hours (as measured by involuntary part-time jobs). To better understand the US experience, we look closely at the experiences of four other rich countries - UK, France, Canada, and Australia. The project is framed by the view that the evolution of cross-country patterns of decent (or lousy) job performance is best explained by local political choices and institutional structures. A key wage-setting institution for low-wage workers is the legal minimum wage. This paper will examine the effects of minimum wage regulation on the incidence and relative pay and of lousy jobs, as well as adequacy of job availability for young less skilled workers in these five countries. The main goal is to generate lessons from abroad for improving American decent job performance. A key question concerns the resiliency of the minimum wage as an effective tool against the payment of very low wages, a reflection in turn of the resiliency of the social norms and political action necessary to maintain meaningful protective labor regulation.
