Topic Labor and Employment

Education and Pandemic SARS-CoV-2 Infections in the German Working Population: The Mediating Role of Working from Home

Objectives SARS-CoV-2 infections were unequally distributed during the pandemic, with those in disadvantaged socioeconomic positions being at higher risk. Little is known about the underlying mechanism of this association. This study assessed to what extent educational differences in SARS-CoV-2 infections were mediated by working from home.Methods We used data of the German working population derived ...

No Lasting Increase in the Gender Care Gap in Germany after the Coronavirus Pandemic

The gender care gap, i.e., the difference between the amount of unpaid care work—such as childcare and housework—performed between men and women is comparatively high in Germany: Women take on much more unpaid care work than men. This gap increases consistently when starting a family. At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, many feared that the gender care gap may grow even larger. In ...

The Long-term Consequences of Early School Absences for Educational Attainment and Labour Market Outcomes

School absences can negatively impact a child's schooling, including the loss of teacher-led lessons, peer interactions, and, ultimately, academic achievement. However, little is known about the long-term consequences of school absences for overall educational attainment and labour market outcomes. In this paper, we used data from the 1970 British Cohort Study to examine long-term associations between ...

The Cost of Fair Pay: How Child Care Work Wages Affect Formal Child Care Hours, Informal Child Care Hours, and Employment Hours

The debate on the effects of child care policies on household and individual behavior is substantial but lacks a discussion of the unintended consequences of rising wages in the child care work sector. To address this gap in the debate, the relation between rising pay and formal child care hours, informal child care hours, and employment hours is analyzed empirically with a case study on child care ...

A Star Was Born: How Workers Respond to Politically-Charged Job Postings (with Pawel Adrjan, Mária Balgová, Simon Jäger, and Jason Sockin)

While nouns in the German language are gendered toward males, the introduction of the "gender star" or "gender colon"' have allowed for nouns to be interpreted as not assigning gender, or non-binary. Their usage however has become highly politically polarizing. Using over 40 million online job postings from 2016 to 2023, we document the rising prevalence of the gender star and colon in the German...

Migration and native health: new evidence from employer-employee data

This paper evaluates the effects of immigration on health in the workplace. Using rich linked employer-employee data, I demonstrate that firms with a higher concentration of foreign workers experience lower rates of long-term sick leave among native employees. The effect on the total sick rate is smaller in magnitude. The results are consistent with foreign employment alleviating understaffing and...

Relief through software? A linear probability model on the relationship between digitalization, semi-automation and work intensity in acute nursing care

This study asks how work intensity differs between nurses that work in three different hospital settings: 1) non-digitalized hospital, 2) digitalized hospital and 3) digitalized+semi-automated hospital. Theoretical and political expectations are that nurses experience less work intensity with higher digital maturity of the hospital. The digital transformation of hospitals is a current political...

How to increase employment of the elderly

Expert Studies on Fundamental Issues of Public Finance, Taxation, and Economic Policy

After being commissioned by the Federal Ministry of Finance, researchers at DIW Berlin and the ifo Institute prepare short-term expert reports and analyses on national, European and international financial, tax and fiscal policy issues.

Expert Studies on Fundamental Issues of Public Finance, Taxation, and Economic Policy

After being commissioned by the Federal Ministry of Finance, researchers at DIW Berlin and the ifo Institute prepare short-term expert reports and analyses on national, European and international financial, tax and fiscal policy issues.