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The student workforce plays a substantial part in several low-paying industries such as retail and hospitality, and this has grown over time. However, there has been little recent research. The usual assumption is that students compete successfully with the local labour force for low-skill, part-time jobs, but there is little evidence for this. Using results from twelve employer interviews located in two cities in the United Kingdom (Bristol and Cardiff), we reconsider employers' perspectives on taking on students. We find that, rather than seeing the labour market as an undistinguished mass of 'arms and legs', employers are well aware of the pros and cons of employing students, and use this information to build flexible workforces which complement the local non-student labour supply. This fits into the well documented model of the 'core' and 'periphery' workforces. We do find evidence of indirect competition, through changes in the way jobs are advertised and filled. We also note the growth in managers who have themselves worked as students may be changing the 'frame of reference' of those managers, further shifting the demand for student workers in the long term.

This paper contributes to debates around social mobility and social capital by exploring the links between social class background, assistance from non-parental personal contacts for finding employment, and social class destination. The literature on social mobility, social capital and social networks is reviewed, drawing a conceptual distinction between social capital and social networks. Previous research has focussed on help from parents, yet much of the literature indicates that wider social networks are more important for labour market advancement. Using the 1970 British Cohort Study, with data collection at respondent ages 10 and 42, the relationship between help received from relatives or friends in getting jobs and social class is examined. The likelihood of receiving help varies according to class origin, yet the strongest predictor of social class destination is social class background, not social capital.

International political discourse has implied that upskilling leads to higher productivity and growth. Combining aspects from skills theory and institutional theory, this article asks what role upskilling can play in making bad jobs better, drawing on previous research about the process of professionalising the cleaning occupation in Norway. In line with institutional theory on educational transfer, it interprets a change in educational skills -- the introduction of the trade certificate for cleaners -- as a way of legitimising an occupation with a dubious reputation, 'borrowing' legitimacy from the educational system. The trade certificate functioned as a component in the 'reverse signalling' of skills towards procurers of cleaning services and potential employees, which was intended to improve skill use and by that, job quality. I suggest this strategy was founded on a reliance on knowledge society narratives: that education and skills yield complexity, productivity and job quality. However, this change in 'formal structure' did little to change industry job quality, which was subjected to a strict tender-based regime where price generally outweighed skills. A general application of a collective wage agreement was necessary to improve job quality, demonstrating the limits of upskilling for changing work design, even in a collective bargaining system.

Previous research examining skill mismatch in the labour market has ignored potential implications for workers outside of the work environment. We argue that the psychological strain that the discrepancy between worker's skills and job requirements wields on workers spills over into the non-work sphere, increasing work-life conflict. This study explores the consequence of skill mismatch for work-family life and various dimensions of job satisfaction. Using the 2011 British Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS), we find that both over- and underskilled workers reported lower satisfaction with achievement and autonomy, opportunity for development, and pay and security. Results also suggest that not only does skill mismatch have a negative influence on work-life conflict but that this association is completely mediated through job satisfaction. Given this better understanding of the complex ways that skill mismatch in employment shapes non-work life, implications for employees and firms are discussed.

Based on Swedish register data from 2003 to 2012, this study attempts to explain over-education and upward mobility among tertiary graduates. Rarely used explanatory factors are central in the analyses, such as 'still in study' and 'field of education'. Tertiary graduates in low-wage jobs are regarded as over-educated. The results of this work suggest that the general increase in graduates correlates well with the increase in over-educated graduates. Many of those who were categorised as over-educated were students, and graduates from some specific fields were particularly vulnerable to working in low-wage jobs. Sixty per cent of the graduates found more suitable jobs, while up to 40 per cent stayed in jobs related to lower wages. Graduates from fields associated with higher risks of over-education were also less likely to experience upward mobility. The increasing occurrence of over-education among graduates may not only result in a substandard utilisation of human capital (and absence of social mobility), it also seems that the presence of large numbers of over-educated graduates in low-paid work may have implications for unskilled workers, through displacement effects.

Human capital investment is a necessary condition for improving labour market outcomes in most countries. Empirical studies to investigate human capital and its linkages on the labour demand side are, however, relatively scarce due to limitations of firm-level data-sets. Using firm-level data from the Thai manufacturing sector, this paper aims to investigate the effects of skill and human capital on labour productivity. Costs and benefits of human capital improvement are compared indicating that hiring workers who have higher education as well as providing them with in-service training has a statistically and significantly positive impact on an increase in labour productivity. However, hiring workers who have higher education yields less benefit than costs which come from higher average wage expenditures. However, providing training should contribute more benefit than cost. Besides education and training measures, we also measure workers' skill levels into cognitive skills and non-cognitive skills and find that skill in information technology is found to be the most important cognitive skill for increasing labour productivity among Thai manufacturers. Non-cognitive skills such as those in leadership, time-management and communication are also important and seem to have positive relationship to labour productivity among Thai manufacturers.

De-industrialisation and the development of the "service economy" have had a profound impact on the nature of work and employment in contemporary Britain. Theories of post- and reflexive modernity argue that individuals are able to reflexively reconstruct their identities in line with new social and workplace requirements. Yet, stagnating male employment and rapidly rising male economic inactivity suggests that men, in particular, are struggling to adjust to the demands of the new economy. Based on 35 in-depth interviews, this paper explores how those most affected by economic restructuring--low-skilled, poorly educated unemployed male manual workers--are adjusting to the development of the service economy. The paper argues that due to their education and skills and the way they strongly identify with particular forms of manual work, low-skilled unemployed men are not reconstructing their identities by seeking employment in growth areas of service and non-manual employment. Rather, the men continue to seek traditional and familiar forms of male-dominated, low-skill manual employment which are now in decline.

This article presents a critique of the 'high skills' argument which, in the international literature, presents a high skill strategy as an adjunct and necessary condition for the successful expansion of human resources development (HRD) alongside social market institutions and 'joined up' policy. For a developing country such as South Africa, with a large proportion of its populace unemployed and possessing very low levels of skill, a privileging of high skills is inappropriate as the single focus of HRD. The article argues the case for a multi-pronged HRD approach, comprising a joint high-skill and intermediate-skill strategy on the supply side, underpinned by a demand-driven strategy that seeks to stimulate large-scale labour-absorbing employment growth and is supported by appropriate inputs of training for the unemployed. The analysis then examines the actual skills deficit in South Africa in each of the three (high, intermediate and low) skill bands, drawing on evidence from the recent HRD Review 2003 ( HSRC, 2003 ). The article concludes that the skills problem in South Africa relates not only to high-skill needs but also to intermediate and low-skill needs.

Changes in the nature of unskilled work are reinforcing barriers to workers' access to training and increasing requirements for training and development. Until individual and structural barriers to work-based learning are eliminated, policies stressing individual responsibility for learning will only reinforce inequalities. (Contains 40 references.) (SK)