Workforce

About: Workforce is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 32140 publications have been published within this topic receiving 449850 citations. The topic is also known as: labour force & labor force.

The competing demands of employment and informal caregiving to disabled elders.

Abstract: The competing demands of work and elder care are the subject of this study. The employment decisions of the informal caregivers of a nationally representative sample of disabled elders were examined using a nested multinomial logit model. Findings from the work accommodation model demonstrated that primary caregivers and those caring for elders with greater care needs are more likely to take unpaid leave, reduce work hours, or rearrange their work schedules to assume elder care responsibilities. Being female, white, and in fair-to-poor health also increased the likelihood of work accommodation. The model predicting employment of a caregiver revealed that the prospect of having to accommodate work to the demands of caregiving keeps some people from work entirely. However, not all caregivers would choose to work in the absence of caregiving responsibilities. After controlling for the probability of work accommodation, need for care, and availability of others to care, it is more likely that younger, white and more highly educated caregivers will be employed. The self-selection of working caregivers observed in this study should be considered when forecasting changes in caregiving costs associated with changes in the labor force participation of caregivers as a result of deliberate policies or social and demographic trends.

The migration of nurses: trends and policies

Abstract: This paper examines the policy context of the rise in the international mobility and migration of nurses. It describes the profile of the migration of nurses and the policy context governing the international recruitment of nurses to five countries: Australia, Ireland, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States. We also examine the policy challenges for workforce planning and the design of health systems infrastructure. Data are derived from registries of professional nurses, censuses, interviews with key informants, case studies in source and destination countries, focus groups, and empirical modelling to examine the patterns and implications of the movement of nurses across borders. The flow of nurses to these destination countries has risen, in some cases quite substantially. Recruitment from lower-middle income countries and low-income countries, as defined by The World Bank, dominate trends in nurse migration to the United Kingdom, Ireland, and the United States, while Norway and Australia, primarily register nurses from other high-income countries. Inadequate data systems in many countries prevent effective monitoring of these workforce flows. Policy options to manage nurse migration include: improving working conditions in both source and destination countries, instituting multilateral agreements to manage the flow more effectively, and developing compensation arrangements between source and destination countries. Recommendations for enhancements to workforce data systems are provided.

Times are Changing: Gender and Generation at Work and at Home in the USA

Abstract: Times are changing for Americans in the workplace and at home. The US workforce not only looks different today than it did three decades ago as a result of increased participation by women — but it is also different in more subtle, less visible ways. In this chapter, we identify emerging trends showing that women are, for the first time, on a par with men in their desire to advance to jobs with more responsibility, while converging gender roles at work and at home have left men experiencing more work-family conflict than women.

Gender Differences in Restricting Work Efforts Because of Family Responsibilities

Abstract: In egalitarian families, we might expect that men and women similarly prioritize work and family obligations. Yet, prior research examining gender differences in work-family priorities often use measures that imperfectly reflect those priorities. Drawing two samples of full-time married workers from the 1992 National Study of the Changing Workforce, this article analyzed the determinants of placing restrictions on work efforts (reducing work hours, refusing to travel, etc.) for the sake of family life. Results showed that women imposed more job tradeoffs in response to husband's work efforts, whereas men's work restrictions were largely unresponsive to familial characteristics. In conclusion, prioritizing work and family obligations is governed more by gender traditionalism than by egalitarianism. Key Words: employment, families and work, gender. Over the past three decades, a large body of research has examined changes in men's and women's family roles and their effects on the work-family nexus (for overviews, see Bianchi, 2000; Perry-Jenkins, Repetti, & Crouler, 2000). A central concern of this research is an assessment of whether men are more focused on family life as women have increasingly pursued careers. This question takes on added salience as the perception grows that employers are now more willing to allow employees to use company time to attend to family needs (Fried, 1998; Hochschild, 1997). In reviewing these trends, Williams (2000) argued that contemporary adults can realistically strive for marriages in which each partner is both a caregiver and a provider. If so, this would represent a dramatic shift in work-family role performance. Indeed, Presser (1989, p. 531) summarized research findings from the 1970s and early 1980s in this way: "Women generally are the adapters who arrange their work hours around those of their husbands rather than vice versa.... Men are accepters: they are willing to care for children when mothers are employed." Although Presser was synthesizing research that linked children's care with parental work schedules, her assessment pointed to an enduring traditionalism in American family life in which men's work efforts were privileged over women's. For many, shared nurturing and providing roles is the standard of egalitarianism against which contemporary family life is measured. This study contends that restricting work efforts (e.g., by refusing a promotion or limiting work hours) out of a concern for family life reveals a person's priorities regarding work and family roles. As such, the purpose of this study is to examine gender differences in making job trade-offs for the sake of family life. (Although the terms, work restrictions, job trade-offs, and limiting work efforts may be analytically distinct, they are used synonymously in this article.) BACKGROUND Evidence for Egalitarianism Some evidence for egalitarianism in work and family roles can be found in studies that examined temporal trends in attitudes and behaviors. For example, survey data showed that with time, women increasingly desired careers (rather than devoted themselves full time to homemaking), and men increasingly supported matemal employment and were less concerned about its effects on children (Brewster & Padavic, 2000). Yet, commitment to egalitarianism is stronger in younger cohorts, and older cohorts tend to be more traditional in their orientations (Carr, 2002). Other studies found that contemporary men exceeded their past counterparts in doing housework (e.g., Bianchi, Milkie, Sayer, & Robinson, 2000) and child care (e.g., Sayer, Bianchi, & Robinson, 2004). Of course, a stronger determinant of gender convergence on these indicators is women's declining time in these activities (Bianchi, 2000; Coltrane, 2000). Nevertheless, this body of work generally found that men played a greater role in family life when they supported gender equality and when their wives brought more resources (i. …