Labor force particiaption (LFP) in Romania is-at 66.8 percent in 2022-significantly lower than the EU average, especially among women and less educated people. With a declining working-age population, rasing LFP could yield signifcant benefits including by boosting long-term growth, mitigating...

Three years after the COVID-19 crisis, employment and total hours worked in Europe fully recovered, but average hours per worker did not. We analyze the decline in average hours worked across European countries and find that (i) it is not cyclical but predominantly structural, extending a...

This paper studies the puzzling decline in labor force participation observed in the UK following the pandemic. Retirement and long-term sickness appear to be the main drivers, with chronic illness remaining a lingering distinctive factor vis-a-vis peer countries. While the government has...

The literature has analyzed the link between social grants, means-tested and unconditional on employment, and employment in South Africa. The country's social grant expenditure is relatively large amid persistently high unemployment. This study uses a large panel household survey spanning a...

Using quarterly temperature and employment data between 1990 and 2021, this paper uncovers nuanced evidence on the impact of seasonal temperature within US counties: higher winter temperature increases private sector employment growth while higher summer temperature decreases it. The impacts of...