One further factor is that women with children seem to reduce their involvement in the market for labour.
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It is still small, but oDesk shows how globalisation and innovation in information technology, the two big trends that have been under way for some time, are moving the world nearer to a single market for labour.
The zest for reforming pensions, for liberalising the labour market, for speeding up privatisation, for deregulating, has appeared to be fizzling.
"The market for relatively unskilled labour in China has been tightening, and now there is even more incentive for companies to relax their standards, so they try and fill up their work spaces, " he said.
In Sweden active labour-market policies became an excuse for not dismantling other rigidities in the labour market.
The recent uptick in earnings at the bottom is a blip in an otherwise long downward trend in the market for low-skilled labour.
He said it had been part of the UK labour market for years and was used by "a number of member states" as well.
In particular we run the risk that another generation of long-term unemployed become condemned to languish outside the labour market for the rest of their lives.
Thus those who have been out of contact with the labour market for a year or more find it extremely difficult to get back into it.
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In brief, we need to move to a system that (1) makes room for more flexible contracts in the labour market, (2) has a minimal welfare net for workers who are out of work, and (3) resolves labour market disputes more quickly.
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Jersey's Labour Market figures for December 2012 have also been released by the Statistics Unit.
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France, the UK and six other EU countries have maintained labour market barriers for workers from Bulgaria and Romania.
Turnover in the fire service in London was 5.6% last year, compared with around 15% for the labour market as a whole.
But this is really an argument for labour-market reform to minimise the cost of recessions, not one for measures to prevent them altogether.
The outstanding economic achievement of the past few years has been the improved performance of the labour market, for which the Tories were largely responsible.
Mr Berlusconi also underlined the need for labour-market reforms and competition.
Even France's conservative president, Nicolas Sarkozy, is unwilling to damage social cohesion (and risk trouble in the streets) by pushing hard for labour-market, pension and welfare reforms.
This issue is not much considered by mainstream economists, who are too busy focusing on monetary policy, the impact of fiscal austerity or the need for labour-market reforms.
When it last took in poor countries (Spain and Portugal in 1986), the European Community, as it was then called, was not a single market for goods, services, labour and capital.
The proposals for labour-market reform put forward in the summer at the government's suggestion by Peter Hartz, a senior Volkswagen man, are a test of the new government's determination to enact painful structural reforms.
Leaving aside such disincentives as pervasive corruption, maddening bureaucracy and organised crime, there is the question whether the government's plans for the labour market will do enough to stimulate the growth Italy has so woefully failed to generate.
They are one step ahead of the government, which has reacted with fumbling confusion, abruptly launching an austerity plan and a vague scheme for labour-market reform, only to withdraw bits of both at the first cheep of protest.
"The decrease in the unemployment rate is welcome and the latest labour market figures for Northern Ireland continue to demonstrate that our current unemployment rate compares favourably to the equivalent rates for the UK, European Union and Republic of Ireland, " she said.
But it gets poor marks for the rigidity of its labour market, its shortage of skills and, above all, for the perception that corruption is sharply rising.
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Until recently the market for football players was as parochial as any other European labour market.
An ever-tightening labour market, especially for skilled workers, may eventually put pressure on wages.
Within a few years, however, the labour market, especially for young people, should tighten dramatically.
These jobs now make up some 40% of the American labour market and account for 70% of the jobs created since 1998.
However persistent the European Commission's demands for uniform labour-market treatment of all EU citizens, the red tape between national labour markets remains frustratingly thick.
After all the talk about what happened in the 1980s, Wednesday's labour market figures, for many, will have felt like another blast from the past.
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