IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pes/wpaper/2017no147.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Influence of the Economic Situation on Employment and its Structure in the Central and Eastern European Countries

Author

Listed:
  • Mariusz Zielinski

    (Opole University of Technology, Poland)

Abstract

The Central and Eastern European countries suffered from a decrease in professional activity and increases in unemployment, income inequality, and underemployment. In most of the countries in the region, it was decided to increase labour market flexibility, adopting a Western European model of labour market functioning. The effects of deregulation (flexibility increase) for the labour market depend to a great extent on the economic situation. The paper attempts to answer the question of the degree to which changes in the employment level and structure can be explained by changes in the economic situation. The article verified two hypotheses: “the employment level reacts to changes in the economic situation; however, this reaction in the Central and Eastern European countries is more severe than the average reaction in the European Union” (H1) and “changes in the economic situation decide to a greater extent the employment level in the groups experiencing discrimination (women, youngest and oldest people) more than for employees in general” (H2). The research encompassed 11 Central and Eastern European countries (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovenia and Slovakia) on the basis of statistical data published by Eurostat for the period of 2004 to 2015. Data analysis was performed using the correlation coefficient and coefficient of determination. In the majority of the examined countries, a statistically significant correlation occurs between changes in GDP and total employment level; furthermore, the influence of changes in GDP on the employment level is greater than the European Union’s average. The data do not indicate discrimination against certain groups (women, young people, people in pre-retirement age), changes in the employment levels of the aforementioned groups are less dependent on the economic situation than the changes in total employment.

Suggested Citation

  • Mariusz Zielinski, 2017. "The Influence of the Economic Situation on Employment and its Structure in the Central and Eastern European Countries," Working Papers 147/2017, Institute of Economic Research, revised May 2017.
  • Handle: RePEc:pes:wpaper:2017:no147
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.badania-gospodarcze.pl/images/Working_Papers/2017_No_147.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2017
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    economic growth; employment; discrimination on the labor market; Central and Eastern European countries; European Union;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J21 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure
    • J70 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pes:wpaper:2017:no147. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Adam P. Balcerzak (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ibgtopl.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.