This article focuses on two dimensions of labour market integration, sorting into different industries (niching) and sorting into workplace establishments (segregation) by share of migrant workers. We seek to understand to what degree these two dimensions of immigrants’ lack of labour market integration—niching and segregation—overlap with each other. The study is based on Finnish individual, panel and relational registry data, and we focus on the three largest immigrant groups—Estonians, Russians and Swedes—who have arrived from countries with different wealth levels to the Helsinki metropolitan area. By applying generalised structural equation modelling, we estimate industrial niching and workplace segregation—measured as a degree of overconcentration of immigrants in particular industries and workplace establishments, respectively—jointly. Our main findings show a strong overlap between niching and segregation for all ethnic groups. Segregation and niching levels are the highest among Estonians, but very similar for Russians and Swedes. These findings do not support the cultural similarity argument in immigrant labour market integration. Rather, immigration policy and origin country wealth level may be determinant. Additionally, we found that females are more likely than males to be employed simultaneously in niched industries and segregated workplace establishments, supporting the thesis of gender-based networks.

Despite many initial similarities, Latvia and Poland represent two opposite extremes in terms of practical and theoretical approaches to the economic crisis. The Polish government applied a ‘pragmatic’ approach to fight the recession, based on expansionary fiscal policies and currency devaluation. Conversely, the Latvian administration opted for the Austerity and internal devaluation strategy. Consequently, the objective of this paper is to analyze, from the perspective of political economy, the strategies chosen for the economic crisis management and their effects in Latvia and Poland, in light of the main EU narratives about its causes and responses. The research contends that the economic performance of both countries during the crisis was due to their respective economic structures. On the one hand, Poland is a bigger, more diversified and industrialized economy, with fewer channels of vulnerability and could apply expansionary policies effectively. On the contrary, the economic model established in Latvia generated a high exposure to external shocks, in particular, with a double vulnerability in the banking sector. In this context, due to internal and external motives, the Latvian government decided to apply the austerity and internal devaluation strategy, worsening the economic decline and the subsequent recovery.

The world is currently facing the largest humanitarian crisis since the Second World War. The growing number of people displaced by civil conflict or natural disasters has increased dramatically in the recent years and this is posing enormous challenges to host countries. However, to date economic impacts of refugees in host and sending countries are controversial and arguably understood. Therefore, the aim of this article is to analyse how the traditional economic approach of migration and labour can help to understand and manage the refugees’ situation, as well as their potential benefits for all the parties involved. The present research concludes that, in the long run, refugee migration may have positive outcomes for sending and host economies, and for themselves. However, it is also emphasized that carefully designed refugee policies are critical to meet that goal, mainly focusing on two aspects: identification and integration.

Purpose - – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of temporary migration on the upward occupational mobility by using a novel database from Estonia. Design/methodology/approach - – The authors use a unique data set of the online job search portal of Estonia that includes thousands of employees with foreign work experience. The authors study whether the presence of temporary migration in ones working career is associated with upward movement in the occupational ladder, defined either in terms of wages or required human capital. Findings - – The authors did not find any positive effect of temporary migration on upward occupational mobility and in case of females the effect was negative. The results could be related to the short-term nature of migration and the occupational downshifting abroad as well as the functioning of home country labour market. Research limitations/implications - – While the uniqueness of the data set is of value, one needs to acknowledge its weaknesses: the job-seekers work histories are self-reported and the authors do not know what information was left out as undesired by applicant. Practical implications - – The findings imply that the benefits of temporary migration from Eastern to Western Europe on the sending country via the returnees’ labour market performance might be limited, yet it does not exclude the benefits of return migration through other mechanism. Originality/value - – The literature on return migration is not big and there are only a few papers dealing with occupational change or mobility of the return migrants. Compared to earlier studies we have looked at wider set of occupations ranked by different ladders. Using the unique data set the authors have included in the study ca 7,500 return migrants while earlier studies have been based on rather small samples.

Estonia ranks consistently on top of the list of countries with the largest gender pay gap. However, irrespective of abundant aggregate level evidence, little is known what motivates the gap at the individual level. In this paper we precisely address the issue of gender pay gap at the individual level. We examine how large is the gender pay gap in actual and expected wages and how it can be explained. We use a rich dataset from Estonian Labour Force Survey on actual wages, and the data from CV Keskus on people's wage expectations. Findings show that education and ethnicity are primary sources for gender based wage discrimination hinting at structural cleavages in Estonian society. Results have major policy implications for other multi-lingual countries with similar historical background.

Purpose - – Recent economic recession has highlighted the role of labour market flexibility as a key factor of competitiveness of a country. Despite the fact that labour mobility can essentially be seen as part of labour market flexibility, there is notable research gap concerning spatial mobility and other facets of labour market flexibility. The purpose of this special issue is to fill these gaps. Design/methodology/approach – - The papers in the special issue represent various quantitative methods and databases, whereas mainly micro data (workplace, labour force or immigrant surveys, job search portal, etc.) is used. However, the type of labour market flexibility addressed is both micro- and macro-level. Findings - – It is demonstrated that labour occupational mobility is determined by the business cycle, numerical flexibility, occupational categories, and sector. Spatial mobility may have counterintuitive effects on individual occupational mobility depending on gender and it is related to various flexibilities in the workplace. It is also suggested that different types of flexibilities on a firm level are interdependent of each other. Originality/value - – The special issue adds to the labour market related knowledge by integrating labour market flexibility and mobility. Individually, both phenomena have been studied before, but not much research is devoted to their inter-linkages. The special issue also contributes by examining labour market flexibility and spatial mobility in the context of different countries, economic cycles, and institutional settings.

The purpose of the paper is to analyse how labour market and labour market institutions reacted during recent crises. In early 1990s Estonia introduced a set of rather unique policy options like currency board as a ground for monetary policy, low taxes, open foreign trade policy, low public sector debts, annually balanced state budget etc. These measures caused very limited options to implement both monetary and fiscal policy. Macroeconomic adjustment will take place in such situation through the labour market. In the case of Estonia, we can observe a very high labour market flexibility, which played a crucial role in recent economic recession. The measures taken included a reduction of nominal wages, working hours and redundancies among employees. This indicates that the traditional institutional factors that protect workers and also could decrease the flexibility of the labour market, such as labour market regulation, social protection and union activities, are not very well developed in Estonia and do not have a significant effect on the outcomes of the labour market. The labour market reform was launched in Estonia in 2009. The main idea of the New Employment contract was that the termination of employment relations became less expensive for employers. Although empirical evidence show that the Employment Contracts Act entered into force at a time when most lay-offs had already been effected.

Globalisation means intensified competition, the transfer of investments, production relocation outside of Europe, job losses, unemployment and rapid structural changes. European labour markets are characterised as relatively rigid, with high social security and strong industrial relations (IR). The aim of this study is to find out, how the social partners, governments and researchers interpret the challenges of globalisation on future developments of industrial relations. The research is based on expert foresight survey where IR experts from 34 countries were interviewed. The project looked to the future, to the year 2025 and discussed on what industrial relations and social dialogue would look like after fifteen-twenty years. The main findings convinced that decentralisation of collective bargaining is expected in old member states, while the situation will remain unchanged in majority of the new member states. We can conclude that European level convergence is expected in the area of industrial relations

The existing literature on return migration has resulted in several studies analysing the impact of foreign work experience on the returnees’ earnings or their decision to become self-employed; however, in this paper we analyse the less studied effect on occupational mobility – how the job in the home country after returning compares to the job held before migration. The effect of temporary migration on occupational mobility is analysed using unique data from an Estonian online job search portal covering approximately 10-15% of the total workforce, including thousands of employees with temporary migration experience. The focus on data from a Central and Eastern European country is motivated given that the opening of labour markets in old EU countries to the workforce of the new member states has led to massive East-West migration. We did not find any positive effect of temporary migration on upward occupational mobility and in some groups, such as females, the effect was negative. These results could be related to the typically short-term nature of migration and occupational downshifting abroad as well as the functioning of the home country labour market.

While graduates of real sciences are considered crucial to the development of the knowledge-based economy, most European countries are still characterised by the low proportion of young people choosing to study natural and life sciences.The current research is motivated by a desire to compare the labour market performance of graduates of various disciplines to see whether there is any evidence of an over-supply of social science graduates.In this study we use the data from two waves of an Estonian survey of university alumni to analyse the labour market positions of young people with different educational backgrounds, during and after graduation, through both an economic boom and a deep recession.The results show that many students work during their studies, mostly for economic reasons.There are some signs of over-qualification and a mismatch between subjects studied and current jobs.There is a wagepremium observable between social science and real science graduates only at the master/doctoral level, not at bachelor level.This is partly explained by examining the sectors and companies where social and real sciences graduates are employed; however, a part of the gap remains unexplained.

As energy demand and prices continue to grow, oil shale might help mitigate the energy crisis—it can widely be found all over the world but so far has not been widely used. Estonia is unique in the world for producing a large majority of energy out of oil shale and has been set as an example in numerous papers covering oil shale deposits, technology etc. This paper is the first to analyse oil shale energy related workforce and provides scenario forecasts of the labour demand for the Estonian energy sector in 2010–2020. The contribution of the paper is twofold. First, the paper provides a valuable insight into oil shale energy related workforce, enabling to take into consideration the educational needs in countries where oil shale industry might be set up. Second, methodology-wise, the paper relates labour demand and supply to different scenarios of energy production capacities. The results illustrate problems related to aging of the workforce in energy production. If the existing trends continue in educational attainment in Estonia, there will be a serious shortage of high-skilled engineering and manufacturing specialists. Our method provides a simple yet reliable enough way to check for such problems early enough.