Introduction

Abstract

Despite recent shifts in global economic influence, much of the academic and policy debate on labour markets throughout the world still focuses on the relative merits of the institutions and the performance of labour markets in Europe and the United States of America. The European Union’s grand Lisbon Agenda with its commitment to ‘more and better jobs’ was often explicitly motivated by failure of Europe to generate jobs in the same numbers as the United States.¹ Certainly the US performance in the 1990s had been highly impressive. In that decade, it experienced its longest period of sustained economic growth in the 20th century. Unemployment fell to among the lowest levels in the OECD, and the employment rate peaked at an all-time historical high. There was no doubt that the ‘American Jobs Machine’ had been remarkably successful in creating more jobs, 20 million between 1991 and 2000. But were they better jobs? Some argued that most were low-paid, dead-end jobs in services, while the well-paid jobs in manufacturing were being destroyed by the combined forces of globalization and technical change. Others argued that, on the contrary, this unprecedented employment expansion was associated with the creation of jobs with higher-than-average skill and pay levels, especially in professional and managerial occupations.