Each year, the Gov¿t. hires tens of thousands of new employees. Traditionally, the vast majority of these new employees were appointed at grades GS-11 and below. However, the number of new hires at grades GS-12 and above has been increasing, especially since FY 2000. New programs often require the influx of new expertise at higher levels. As the senior or journeyman-level analysts, supervisors and managers, these new upper level employees have critical roles in the effective and efficient operation of the Gov¿t. This group of new employees was studied to determine whether the Gov¿t. is hiring the best applicants for these jobs in accord with the merit system principles and to find ways to improve the hiring of these personnel.
The market for high-skilled workers is becoming increasingly global, as are the markets for knowledge and ideas. While high-skilled immigrants in the United States represent a much smaller proportion of the workforce than they do in countries such as Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, these immigrants have an important role in spurring innovation and economic growth in all countries and filling shortages in the domestic labor supply. This report summarizes the proceedings of a Fall 2014 workshop that focused on how immigration policy can be used to attract and retain foreign talent. Participants compared policies on encouraging migration and retention of skilled workers, attracting qualified foreign students and retaining them post-graduation, and input by states or provinces in immigration policies to add flexibility in countries with regional employment differences, among other topics. They also discussed how immigration policies have changed over time in response to undesired labor market outcomes and whether there was sufficient data to measure those outcomes.
This open access book analyses the strategies of migration intermediaries from the public and private sectors in Switzerland to select, attract, and retain highly skilled migrants who represent value to them. It reveals how state and economic actors define “wanted immigrants” and provide them with privileged access to the Swiss territory and labour market. The analysis draws on an ethnographic study conducted in the French-speaking Lake Geneva area and the German-speaking northwestern region of Switzerland between 2014 and 2018. It shows how institutional actors influence which resources are available to different groups of newcomers by defining and dividing migrants according to constructed social categories that correlate with specific status and privileges. This research thus shifts the focus from an approach that takes the category of highly skilled migrant for granted to one that regards context as crucial for structuring migrants’ characteristics, trajectories, and experiences. Beyond consideration of professional qualifications, the ways decision-makers perceive candidates and shape their resource environments are crucial for constructing them as skilled or unskilled, wanted or unwanted, welcome or unwelcome.
Recent U.S. immigration reform proposals have focused almost exclusively on regulating the population of low-skilled foreign workers. High-Skilled Immigration in a Global Labor Market contends that policymakers should focus more on attracting immigrants with exclusive skill sets-professional, technical, and managerial (PTM) workers. PTM workers positively impact the economy by expanding production capability, increasing the growth rate of total factor productivity, and enhancing international competitiveness. Barry R. Chiswick and his coauthors examine the policies established by other OECD countries (such as Australia, Canada, and New Zealand) to attract foreign PTM workers and explore how U.S. immigration policy could be altered to maximize the economic benefits of high-skilled immigration.
These conference proceedings provide data on the scale and characteristics of flows and stocks of skilled and highly skilled foreign workers, assess the quality of the data available and the concepts used, and discuss how to improve their comparability.
Political and scientific debates on migration policies have mostly focused on governments' efforts to control or reduce low-skilled, asylum, and irregular migration or to encourage the return migration of these categories. Less research and constructive discourse has been conducted on the role and effectiveness of policies to attract or retain high-skilled workers. An improved understanding of the drivers and dynamics of high-skilled migration is essential for effective policy-making, as most highly developed and emerging economies experience growing shortages of high-skilled labour supply in certain occupations and sectors, and skilled immigration is often viewed as one way of addressing these. Simplistic assumptions that high-skilled migrants are primarily in pursuit of higher wages raise the expectation that policies which open channels for high-skilled immigration are generally successful. Although many countries have introduced policies aimed at attracting and facilitating the recruitment of high-skilled workers, not all recruitment efforts have had the desired effects, and anecdotal evidence on the effectiveness of these programmes is rather mixed. The reason is that the rather narrow focus on migration policy coincides with a lack of systematic and rigorous consideration of other economic, social, and political drivers of migration, which may be equally - or sometimes even more - important than migration policies per se. A better understanding of migration policies, their making, consequences and limitations, requires a systematic knowledge of the broader economic, social and political structures and their interaction in both origin and destination countries. This book enhances this vibrant field of social scientific enquiry by providing a systematic, multidisciplinary, and global analysis of policies driving international high-skilled migration processes in their interaction with other migration drivers at the individual, city, national, and international level.
Skilled technical occupationsâ€"defined as occupations that require a high level of knowledge in a technical domain but do not require a bachelor's degree for entryâ€"are a key component of the U.S. economy. In response to globalization and advances in science and technology, American firms are demanding workers with greater proficiency in literacy and numeracy, as well as strong interpersonal, technical, and problem-solving skills. However, employer surveys and industry and government reports have raised concerns that the nation may not have an adequate supply of skilled technical workers to achieve its competitiveness and economic growth objectives. In response to the broader need for policy information and advice, Building America's Skilled Technical Workforce examines the coverage, effectiveness, flexibility, and coordination of the policies and various programs that prepare Americans for skilled technical jobs. This report provides action-oriented recommendations for improving the American system of technical education, training, and certification.
The studies offered in this volume contribute to a Global Labor History freed from Eurocentrism and methodological nationalism. Using literature from diverse regions, epochs and disciplines, the book provides arguments and conceptual tools for a different interpretation of history – a labor history which integrates the history of slavery and indentured labor, and which pays serious attention to diverging yet interconnected developments in different parts of the world. The following questions are central: ▪ What is the nature of the world working class, on which Global Labor History focuses? How can we define and demarcate that class, and which factors determine its composition? ▪ Which forms of collective action did this working class develop in the course of time, and what is the logic in that development? ▪ What can we learn from adjacent disciplines? Which insights from anthropologists, sociologists and other social scientists are useful in the development of Global Labor History?
Published in 1997. The aim of this book is to explore urban modelling traditions, identify key limitations and contributions and to develop a more general model within a discrete choice framework. The scope of the effort is on household choices regarding residential location, workplace and housing tenure. It is the first systematic effort to analyze the structure and sequence of the choices made by households regarding residential location and workplace. The implications for urban theory, model development and policy analysis are substantial.
