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Bell and Blanchflower's research on youth unemployment has been highly influential in affecting policy directions in both the UK and Europe during the Great Recession. It has also generated substantial public concern for a `lost generation' of unemployed young people through their sustained engagement in media and public debate.
Research on the post-apartheid South African labour market showed high levels of economic inactivity among black people concentrated in certain areas and high employee turnover among these groups. An integrated development programme was developed in and around Port Elizabeth tailored to address specific failings in labour market supply and demand identified by the research findings. This brought greatly improved employment rates for over 3,000 participating job seekers, with more than 80% achieving a positive outcome in terms of employment or further training. Furthermore, the programme reduced turnover rates for those employers involved in the project, and built the capacity of Union workforce representatives. The development programme comprising integrated training workshops and employer support is now being rolled out across South Africa.
There is an inherent tension between progress in the European Union's marketization agenda on the one hand, and the agenda for the development of European social citizenship on the other. Although markets internalise and manage many aspects of economic activity, the process of marketization also creates and ignores negative social and economic consequences. Focussing on uncertainty and insecurity in labour markets, the research by Crouch, Marginson and Meardi addressed the capacity of public and private employee relations and corporate governance arrangements, including collective bargaining and immigration, to offset these negative consequences. European policy makers are now gaining an interest in mitigating the effects of marketization. As a result, this timely research has challenged conventional wisdom that marketization promises unqualified gains and has stimulated significant ongoing policy and trade union debate across Europe.
Collaboration between Leicester and Singapore's Workforce Development Agency has led to impacts underpinned by a 25-year history of research into skills, training and workforce development. The relationship has enabled the establishment of Singapore's first policy research centre designed to inform the government's workforce policy revaluation. Before the establishment of the Centre for Skills, Performance and Productivity Research (CSPPR), independent research in these areas was virtually non-existent in Singapore. Impacts include creating a new field of study in Singapore; contribution to government policy and direction in Singapore, and a resulting contribution to the well-being of the country's economy and society.
Research carried out at the University of Glasgow directly resulted in an increased understanding of the complexity of modern youth transitions, helped to ensure that policy-makers understood the implications of their focus on the NEET group (Not in Education, Employment or Training), drew attention to the implications of precarious forms of work and highlighted the potential for acute social withdrawal among young people who experience difficult transitions in employment. This work has been widely covered by the media, has informed the development of a European agenda on vulnerable youth and was used as part of the response by the International Trade Union Congress to the G20 summit in Mexico.
A new methodology has been developed that enables a more flexible approach to understanding the effects of immigration on the labour market and the native-born labour force. The key finding is that the effect of immigration on wages and employment depends on the extent of the substitutability between immigrant and native born labour. This substitutability differs at different skill levels, so that immigration has a greater effect on unskilled native born workers. This new methodology's findings have informed the debate over labour market effects and have influenced the development of related policies by Government and other key stakeholders.
The evidence produced by Professor Wadsworth's research directly has shaped or influenced policy made by government. In particular, the research has been used as input into several key policy recommendations made by the Home Office sponsored Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) (of which Wadsworth is a member) to inform the coalition government's declared aim of achieving a reduction in the levels of net migration in the current parliament to the tens of thousands. The research has been cited by numerous stakeholders in the debate on the impact of rising immigration on the labour market. There are numerous examples of citations in a public discussion, consultation document or judgement.
The impact of the research programme led to advice being provided to inward-investment companies on labour supply; to the re-working of the Northern Ireland Department of Employment and Learning's [DEL] training provision; to participation on the government's Task Force charged with re-integrating the unemployed into the labour force and to formulating the Northern Ireland [NI] response to the UK-wide welfare reform agenda. The research covered company recruitment experiences, spatial behaviour and perceptions of young people and benefit claimants, and the views of Job Centre advisors. It found that targeting jobs to deprived areas did not necessarily bring jobs to residents of these areas, that recruitment experiences were dependent on locational context, that some people are in a low mobility trap, and that advisors sometimes find it difficult to assimilate rapidly changing policies.
Research in COMPAS (Centre on Migration, Policy and Society, in the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, Oxford) on low-waged migrant labour, particularly in the care sector, has contributed significantly to public debate and policy development on migrant labour, labour demand, and trafficking and forced labour.
Led by Anderson, COMPAS's work in these fields has directly impacted upon (1) international debate, by informing the position of the UN and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) on trafficking; (2) UK immigration policy and practice by making a key contribution to how skills and labour shortages are conceptualized for the purposes of policy; and (3) the work of trade unions and NGOs in the UK by demonstrating links between forced labour and labour market flexibility, a connection that has been taken up in campaigning.
Professor Pedro Martins' research expertise is on labour economics, including dismissals, wages and social returns of education. From June 2011 until February 2013, he was seconded from Queen Mary to undertake the key role of Portuguese Secretary of State for Employment. Informed by his research, he initiated and implemented a programme of effective labour market legislative reforms over a relatively short period of time. A reformed labour code (four changes of law) and several ordnances, resolutions and other policy change were the outcome, affecting individual dismissals, working time, collective bargaining, training and active labour market policies. His aim was to reduce unemployment by partly deregulating the labour market, so reducing the disincentives for firms to employ people, and by promoting active labour market policies to raise skill levels within the economy. The reforms affected approximately five million people. Following the reforms, Portugal moved to eighth place (in 2009 it was first) out of 34 countries in terms of the strength of permanent employees' protection (OECD Employment Outlook 2012); and unemployment fell, from 17.7% to 15.6%, and GDP increased, by 1.3%, between the first and third quarters of 2013.
The research outlined below was instrumental in the development of a new classification of graduate occupations, beyond a dichotomous graduate/non-graduate distinction, which has become a standard typology for analysing the graduate labour market. Policymakers and research bodies, such as HECSU and Universities UK, have used it to better understand the impact of higher education, labour market and wider social policy reform, such as migration policy. Most UK HEIs have used this typology to compare employment outcomes for their graduates and it has also proved to be an important point of reference for careers advisors and students to aid educational and career decision-making.