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1. Working from Home and Mental Well-being in the EU at Different Stages of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Gendered Look at Key Mediators

Author:
Sandra Leitner
Publication Date:
03-2024
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (WIIW)
Abstract:
This paper analyses the relationship between working from home (WFH) and mental well-being at different stages during the first two critical years of the COVID-19 pandemic, when governments repeatedly imposed lockdowns and enacted WFH mandates to contain the spread of the virus. Using data from a representative survey conducted at four different time periods in 2020 (first lockdown, subsequent gradual reopening), 2021 (further lockdown) and 2022 (restrictions widely lifted) in the 27 EU member states, it examines the potentially changing role of several mediators over time, such as work-family conflict, family-work conflict, stability, resilience, isolation, the importance of different support networks, workload, physical risk of contracting COVID-19 at work, and housing conditions. For the first lockdown, it also differentiates by previous WFH experience, in terms of WFH novices and experienced WFH workers. It differentiates by gender, in order to take the potential gendered nature and effect of COVID-19 measures into account. The results show that while there was no direct relationship between WFH and mental well-being, there are several important mediators whose relevance was specific not only to certain stages of the pandemic, but also to previous experience with WFH and gender. Stability is the only mediator that was relevant over the entire two-year pandemic period. Work-family conflict and family-work conflict were only relevant during the first lockdown, while resilience and isolation mattered especially when most of the EU economies had lifted most of their restrictions. Unlike established WFH workers, WFH novices had an advantage during the first lockdown, benefiting from lower family-work conflict and more helpful networks of family and friends. Moreover, our results differ by gender: for females who undertook WFH, important mediators were work-family conflict and family-work conflict. Both were related to adjustments they had to make in work and non-work hours in response to the enforced closure of schools and childcare facilities during the lockdowns, especially during the first. For males who undertook WFH, especially WFH novices, support from networks of family and friends was an important mediator.
Topic:
Labor Issues, European Union, Mental Health, COVID-19, Well-Being, and Working from Home
Political Geography:
Europe and Global Focus

2. Employment Effects of Offshoring, Technological Change and Migration in a Group of Western European Economies: Impact on Different Occupations

Author:
Michael Landesmann and Sandra Leitner
Publication Date:
03-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (WIIW)
Abstract:
This paper estimates conditional demand models to examine the impact of offshoring, technological change, and migration on the labour demand of native workers differentiated by four different types of occupational groups: managers/professionals, clerical workers, craft (skilled) workers and manual workers. The analysis is conducted for an unbalanced panel of five economies Austria, Belgium, France, Spain, and Switzerland covering the period 2005-2018. Our results point to important and occupation-specific effects: offshoring seems to have beneficial employment effects for native craft workers in this set of economies, while negative effects for native manual workers across a wide set of industries (including manufacturing and services industries) and managers/professionals in manufacturing. Furthermore, there are important distinctions whether offshoring occurs in other advanced economies, in the EU13 or in developing countries. The analysis of the impact of technological change shows the strong positive impact which the additional IT equipment has on most occupational groups of native workers (with the exception of manual workers), while robotisation in manufacturing showed strongly negative impacts on the employment of all groups of workers and especially of craft workers. Increasing immigrant shares in the work forces showed strongly negative impacts on native workers – however, considering only the partial substitution effects and not including the potential for productivity and demand effects – and this is mostly accounted for by immigration from low- to medium-income source countries.
Topic:
International Trade and Finance, Migration, Labor Issues, Immigration, Foreign Direct Investment, Employment, Competition, Income Distribution, and Offshoring
Political Geography:
Europe, France, Belgium, Spain, Switzerland, and Austria

3. Functional Specialisation and Working Conditions in Europe

Author:
Sandra Leitner, Roman Stöllinger, and Zuzana Zavarská
Publication Date:
05-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (WIIW)
Abstract:
Specialisation in value-chain functions is one of the new phenomena introduced by global value chains (GVCs). This report investigates the effects of functional specialisation on labour markets in fabrication and R&D activities as the two polar cases of value-chain functions, whereby the former is associated with factory economies, while the latter is characteristic of headquarter economies. More precisely, a metric similar to revealed comparative advantage is used to study the effect of relative functional specialisation on wages and non-wage working conditions. In line with the GVC literature emphasising power relations and organisational aspects of production networks, we are able to identify differentiated effects for functional specialisation patterns on wages in EU member states at the industry level across time. While relative functional specialisation in fabrication tends to hold back wages, functional specialisation in R&D has a positive effect on wage progression, controlling for labour productivity, GVC participation and numerous labour supply- and labour demand-side factors. The use of a constructed ‘sharp’ instrument allows giving these results a causal interpretation. Conversely, both functional specialisation measures are found to improve some non-wage working conditions, namely workers’ physical environment and their work intensity, which is evidence against a potential ‘race to the bottom’ effect of functional specialisation along GVCs. The effect is stronger for relative specialisation in fabrication than for relative specialisation in R&D.
Topic:
International Trade and Finance, Labor Issues, Foreign Direct Investment, European Union, Labor Market, Value Chains, and Wages
Political Geography:
Europe

4. Does my Computer Protect me from Burnout? Cross-country Evidence on the Impact of ICT use within the Job Demands-Resources Model

Author:
Sandra Leitner and Roman Stöllinger
Publication Date:
06-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (WIIW)
Abstract:
This paper uses a large sample of employees from 35 European countries to study the direct and indirect effects of ICT use on burnout and work engagement as two opposite poles of employee psychological health, where the former comprises the three dimensions of exhaustion, cynicism and professional efficacy. It applies the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model and analyses the mediating role of three job demands (work extensity, work intensity, social demands) and four job resources (social support from management or colleagues, job control, rewards) on workers’ psychological health. It accounts for the importance of the place of work for the effect of ICT use on workers’ psychological health by differentiating between four types of workers: home-based workers, highly mobile workers, occasionally mobile workers, and workers who always work at the employer’s premises. The results show that ICT use is associated with lower levels of exhaustion but is unrelated to work engagement. Furthermore, work intensity, work extensity, social demands and rewards mediate the effect of ICT use on exhaustion, while job control and rewards mediate the effect of ICT use on work engagement. Our multi-group analysis attributes the negative effect of ICT use on exhaustion mainly to occasionally mobile workers and to workers who always work at the employer’s premises and highlights that the factors that mediate the effect of ICT use on workers’ psychological health differ across the four types of workers. Home-based workers stand out in two important respects: first, ICT use per se is unrelated to burnout; second, only one factor – work intensity – mediates the effect of ICT use on burnout, but its effect is especially strong.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Work Culture, Engagement, Computers, and Burnout
Political Geography:
Europe

5. Net Migration and its Skill Composition in the Western Balkan Countries between 2010 and 2019: Results from a Cohort Approach Analysis

Author:
Sandra Leitner
Publication Date:
03-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (WIIW)
Abstract:
In view of the scarcity of reliable and detailed data on migration this paper develops the novel cohort approach, which allows us to deduce from annual Labour Force Surveys (LFS) the extent and skill composition of net migration. It is based on representative age cohorts who are followed over time and whose change in size and composition provides information about the extent and skill composition of net migration. As concerns skill composition, the analysis differentiates between four educational levels (Low, Medium-general, Medium-VET and High). The analysis is applied to the six Western Balkan countries (for the period 2010-2019), which lack official, comprehensive and domestic migration statistics, particularly in terms of the skill composition of migrants. The analysis shows that during the period analysed all six Western Balkan countries experienced net emigration which, however, differs across countries in terms of magnitude and particular age pattern. A further breakdown of net migration by highest level of education shows that net emigration in the region mainly occurs among the medium- and low-educated. Contrary to widespread perception, the analysis finds evidence of brain gain in terms of partly substantial net immigration of the highly educated in all countries except Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo. Brain gain is highest among those in their early to mid-20s to early 30s. As this is the age at which students usually complete tertiary education, this is likely to be related to students returning to their home countries after graduating from tertiary education abroad.
Topic:
Economics, International Political Economy, Migration, Labor Issues, and Skilled Labor
Political Geography:
Balkans

6. Immigration and Offshoring: Two Forces of Globalisation and Their Impact on Employment and the Bargaining Power of Occupational Groups

Author:
Michael Landesmann and Sandra Leitner
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (WIIW)
Abstract:
This paper estimates conditional demand models and, using a joint approach for the period 2008-2017, examines the impact of immigration and different measures of offshoring on the labour demand and demand elasticities of native workers in four different types of occupational groups: managers/professionals, clerical workers, craft (skilled) workers and manual workers. The analysis is conducted using data for four EU economies: Austria, Belgium, France and Spain. Our results point to important and occupation-specific direct and indirect effects of immigration and offshoring. Both offshoring – particularly services offshoring – and immigration have negative direct employment effects on all occupations, but native clerks and manual workers are affected the most, and native managers/professionals the least. Generally, offshoring exerts a stronger direct negative employment effect than does immigration. Our results also identify an important (labour demand) elasticity-channel of immigration and offshoring and show that some groups of native workers can also actually gain from globalisation through an improvement in their wage-bargaining position. Overall, our results indicate a deterioration in the bargaining power of native manual workers arising from both immigration and offshoring; an improvement in the bargaining position of native craft workers in the case of both immigration and offshoring; and an improvement in the bargaining position of native clerical workers and managers/professionals in the case of offshoring only. Finally, our analysis of the cross-effects of immigration highlights the important role of migrant managers/professionals for the labour demand and demand elasticities (bargaining power) of native clerical workers, craft and manual workers.
Topic:
Globalization, Labor Issues, Immigration, Employment, and Work Culture
Political Geography:
Europe, France, Belgium, Spain, and Austria

7. Employers’ Skills Requirements in the Austrian Labour Market: On the Relative Importance of ICT, Cognitive and Non-cognitive Skills over the Past 15 Years

Author:
Sandra Leitner and Oliver Reiter
Publication Date:
12-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (WIIW)
Abstract:
This paper analyses job advertisements to identify the particular skills, abilities and characteristics that are in demand on the Austrian labour market. It takes a novel approach and uses information extracted from over 1.5 million job advertisements over the past 15 years from Austria’s largest online job portal, karriere.at, to shed light on employers’ skills needs and the relative importance of, and demand for, different skill types over time. It develops a taxonomy which classifies observable skills into information and communications technology (ICT) skills (which are of increasing importance as a result of the ongoing digital revolution), cognitive skills, cognitively based skills and non-cognitive (soft) skills; but it also takes into account other factors that frequently appear in job advertisements, such as previous work experience, physical appearance, and the willingness to travel, work overtime, weekends or shifts, among others. It shows that Austrian employers are quite demanding: cognitive skills, previous work experience and ICT skills were the three most frequent requirements, appearing in (almost) every second job advertisement in 2019. Over the years, these categories have also become increasingly important to employers. Among cognitively based skills, language skills were the most important, also appearing in every second job advertisement. The ability to work as part of a team, communication skills, independence, flexibility and accuracy were the top five non-cognitive (soft) skills demanded by employers.
Topic:
Economics, International Political Economy, Communications, Labor Issues, Employment, Labor Market, Skilled Labor, and Informal Economy
Political Geography:
Austria