While there is consensus about the combined relevance of liberal regime policies and gendered employment and family trajectories in adulthood, for shaping employment in later life, so far there is no single cross-national study simultaneously addressing these dimensions. Drawing on exceptionally rich, harmonised life history data, we explore the association between employment and family patterns in adulthood, and the prevalence, duration and diversity of extended working lives beyond full pension age, among men and women in four predominantly liberal countries: two from Europe (England and Switzerland) and two from the Americas (the United States and Chile). Our findings indicate that employment trajectories – unlike partnership and fertility trajectories – play a significant role in shaping the prevalence, duration and diversity of later-life employment across the four countries examined. Furthermore, gender differences in later-life employment patterns are particularly notable in England and Chile. Our comparative perspective reveals that while liberal regimes share certain characteristics, they also exhibit significant diversity in how extended working lives manifest and are influenced by lifecourse trajectories.

This article documents the survival of gender inequalities in UK archaeology. We discover how an early equality and diversity agenda (Morris 1992) was dismantled in the late 1990s and explore the impact this had on women’s careers. Analysis of data from Chartered Institute for Archaeologists1 employment surveys for the period 1999–2008 enables a developed understanding of why many women, often reluctantly, left archaeology in their 30s, in a continual ‘leaky pipeline’, as volunteer group British Women Archaeologists was established. We find core issues linked to this ‘sector exodus’ as a gendering of tasks/under-employment, lack of support around parenting, and gendered promotion, leading to pay disparity. We argue that a refusal in the late 1990s to modernize employment structures around women workers’ needs underpins ongoing economic precarity in the sector.

Climate change increasingly threatens human development, economic resilience and labour market stability. Using panel data from Chinese A-share listed firms (2007–2021), this study quantifies the employment impacts of extreme temperatures. A one-standard-deviation increase in exposure reduces employment by 0.07 per cent, equivalent to an average loss of 0.0054 workers per firm and 4.36 jobs across the sample. Extreme heat has a stronger effect than cold, with temperature bin analysis showing an average loss of 0.191 workers per firm and 15.565 jobs overall. Mechanism analyses indicate that extreme temperatures heighten operational risks and financial constraints, reducing labour demand. Internal and external buffers are identified: higher wages mitigate employment losses, government subsidies provide external support, while robot adoption and supply chain concentration show limited moderating effects. Heterogeneity analyses reveal greater vulnerabilities in underdeveloped, resource-dependent and climate-sensitive regions. Results emphasize the need for climate-adaptive policies to protect employment amid rising environmental risks.

The present study examines the influence of non-economic factors on women’s labour market participation in low-income neighbourhoods of urban areas in India. For this purpose, we conducted a survey in two slum areas of Kolkata city in West Bengal – one, located in a residential neighbourhood, and another, situated in the dock area of the city and surrounded by factories. Our survey of 384 ever-married working-age women makes three noteworthy observations. First, the location of slums crucially affects the type of paid work that is available and accessible to women. Secondly, although women’s entry into the labour market maybe crisis-driven, the women workers develop an intrinsic valuation of paid work as their right, and as a means of livelihood in the process. Finally, social and community norms explain both the non-participation and the temporary withdrawal of women from the labour force. Thus, the inability and/or the unwillingness of slum women to participate in the labour market primarily stem from the strict adherence to patriarchal norms in general, and community norms in particular, either imposed on them directly by their spouses or indirectly by the community they reside in. Therefore, our analysis highlights the need for tailor-made policies that meet locality-specific needs.

The domination and exploitation inherent to colonialism entailed casting Africans as violators of European standards, expectations, and even aspirations. This article identifies messaging which permeated the everyday experiences of African wage earners by locating the ways in which employers embedded their understanding of Africans as potential violators into the employment relationship. It examines the records of the Tribunal de Première Instance in Dakar, Senegal, during the decades of high colonialism to reveal the nature of that dynamic, exploring implicit expectations among employers regarding their employees, particularly related to allegations of theft or abandonment of work brought against workers. Analysis of such cases particularly highlights domestic workers, who were overwhelmingly male. The interactions and claims in the justice records reveal clear constructions of violation within the attitudes and actions of non-African employers in colonial Dakar and present the court as a venue for perpetuating that rhetoric.

People with disabilities face barriers to employment compared to people without disabilities, including the way in which employment opportunities are structured. The COVID-19 pandemic has opened up new ways of working (e.g. working from home), which have been trialled in a number of different locations, and these have the potential to widen employment opportunities for people with disabilities. It is therefore important to explore the extent to which job preferences differ between people with disabilities and people without disabilities, in particular for aspects such as teleworking. In total, 253 participants (62 male and 191 female) took part in a discrete choice experiment (DCE) that investigates participants’ preferences for various job aspects. These include discretionary medical leave, flexible scheduling, working from home, and the availability of part-time jobs. People with disabilities significantly prefer flexible scheduling and the availability of part-time jobs compared to people without disabilities. The results of a latent class analysis suggest it is older women with disabilities in particular, who most value increased flexible job design. An analysis of lexicographic preferences suggests that it is people who are most constrained by ‘traditional’ working conditions who benefit the most from increased flexibility, e.g. people who require teleworking or flexible scheduling. This suggests that wider adoption of these attributes by employers has the potential to go some way towards addressing the persistent disability employment gaps and related health inequalities observed in many countries around the world.

Groote Eylandt, one of Australia’s largest islands, is situated north of Darwin in the Northern Territory. The Groote Eylandt Mining Company (GEMCO) is the island’s most prominent employer, having begun open-cut manganese mining in 1964. GEMCO’s long-term presence has led to a seemingly intractable conundrum: economically crucial for First Peoples yet accompanied by chronic socioeconomic and cultural problems. Huge disparities have emerged between the wealthy mining town of Alyangula (with over 90 per cent of its population non-First Peoples and with a predominantly fly-in-fly-out workforce) and the Angurugu and Umbakumba townships (over 90 per cent First Peoples populations). Adopting a theoretical framework of organisational legitimacy, this paper evaluates how enterprise bargaining might contribute to achieving Groote Eylandt’s First Peoples employment and broader community objectives (including health, housing, and environmental restoration). At present, GEMCO’s ‘Employer of Choice’ Indigenous employment strategy comprises three main goals: (1) establishing and maintaining a qualified mentor network; (2) implementing culturally appropriate recruitment and induction processes; and (3) maintaining training programmes that provide the necessary skills for specific jobs. Yet, despite an expansion of mining operations and associated services, First Peoples employment opportunities and participation in the townships have stagnated, while underemployment has become endemic. The paper summarises GEMCO’s Employer of Choice promises and then evaluates these promises against employment and community outcomes. It goes on to explore the possibilities of enterprise bargaining at GEMCO, illustrating how future enterprise agreements might enable the achievement of First Peoples intersecting employment and community goals.

This article explores the subjective experiences of transition to employment in the outsourced/offshored business service sector in Romania. Based on 138 interviews with junior and senior graduates, it maps how different ‘tidal economic waves’ associated with Romania’s economic transition have intersected working biographies since the 1990s. The paper argues that the sector generates many middle-class employment opportunities, legitimising consensus around the idea that ‘this is the best time to be young.’ Yet, informed by elements of political economy, it challenges the conventional repertoires of optimism. In doing so, it tentatively questions the long-term occupational prospects of those who take up entry-level positions in (arguably) automatable, on-the-move, and standardised jobs with lesser high-end value. The paper communicates using the structure of opportunity theory by highlighting how, alongside location, the concept of time (personal, historical, and company time) is woven into the work biographies of members of an under-researched group.