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7ECONOMIC SCIENCES
NATIONAL EMPLOYMENT AND LABOR MARKET IN GLOBAL TRENDS ENVIRONMENT
Bogush L.
PhD in Economics
Ptoukha Institute for Demography and Social Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine 60 T. Shevchenko boulevard, Kyiv, 01032, Ukraine
Abstract
Outlining priorities, guidelines, mechanisms for balanced socio-economic development (in particular, within the framework of implementing, coordinating, increasing the strategies' effectiveness for the development of economy, its employment and labor resource potential in the conditions of powerful global and macro-regional asymmetries' factors) is the key responsibility of the state. The article explores the asymmetries of mobility in the labour market of Ukraine, which are developed under the influence of interacting internal and globalized economic and social-forming processes. The interpretation of the mobility category and its asymmetries is refined; the classification of their global prerequisites, as well as types and aspects of mobility asymmetries (motivated by economic feasibility, broad communal and personal safety factors and incentives, based on the criteria of the role of appropriate processes for the workforce' reproduction and use, the content of potential mechanisms for their optim iza-tion in the activity for sustaining socio-economic development) is suggested.
Keywords: employment, labor market, workforce mobility, global and internal asymmetries' factors, state socio-economic policy.
Introduction. Effective reproduction and use of labor potential is a key factor and a necessary condition for competitive functioning of national neo- and postindustrial economies in an increasingly dense globalized environment that transmits certain common socio-cultural and socio-economic standards, conditions, mechanisms, threats and problems of local and macro-regional communities' life activities and interaction. The success of the national economic development strategy (including the capitalization of its results in terms of sustainability, solidarity and progress of the macro-social system - the state and socium within a country) depends on the quality of consideration, balancing, regulation of specific local, macro-regional and global requirements, factors and needs for resource provision (personnel, material and technical, technological, financial and investment, logistical) to ensure priorities and benchmarks, their motivations in the population' worldview, education, economic culture, professional activity.
The asymmetry of processes of settlement and production systems' territorial organization, that for a long time has been studied by world science on a national and cross-border scale, affects the employment' and labor markets' functioning, determining their development vectors, stimulating or limiting the potential and parameters of workforce movement (individuals and groups of formal and informal employment' searchers). As a result, these asymmetries are constantly in the process of settlement, creating both factors for their strengthening (in particular, on the basis of dynamics in the skilled and unskilled workers' concentration in the labor market and asymmetries of their mobility), as well as conditions for these disparities' productive use by economic competition' objects (separate enterprises, economic activity' sectors and types, countries and their groups) within the competitive
fields of micro-, meso-, macro-levels respectively, each of which has a national and international scale.
Scientific and technological progress as a phenomenon of human civilization gradually intensifies and increases the density of a wide range of interpersonal and inter-community communications (information, cultural, spiritual and ideological; technological and product; transport and transit ones), which results in: the rapid expansion and consolidation of transnational structures focused on drastic reduction in production costs and increase of the profit rate through diversification of production capacities in regions of concentration of relatively cheap raw materials and skilled labor, as well as on decrease in the time of transit both the range of production resources, semi-finished and finished products to consumers; the specialization of growing range of countries on offer in foreign markets a limited list of raw materials, semi-finished products, finished goods and services in quantities capable to meet the needs of macro-regions and the world as a whole; the tendency to establish macro-regional and global standards of management, lifestyle and consumption in all its spheres; the reduction of material and time costs for emigration and pendulum labor migrations (in particular, interstate ones), as well as leveling the aggregate of socio-cultural factors that determine the pace and possibilities of migrants' integration and assimilation in territorial and functional communities regardless of their location and state affiliation (the socium' functional communities include, in particular: labor collectives; the workforce of various associations of enterprises, economy' sectors, branches and their clusters; range of employers' associations and trade unions).
Brief Literature Review. Wide interdisciplinary issues of the employment' and national labor markets' development and asymmetries under the influence of
economic and socio-forming processes' globalization are covered in a range of professional studies, among which it is appropriate to note the approaches developed in the works on: subjectively and functionally oriented mechanism for ensuring the balance of the territorial labor market with an aggregate of influence levers (economic, administrative, legal, information) [13]; socio-economic factors, manifestations and consequences of the formation and implementation of labor market asymmetries in conditions the network society formation in Ukraine as a country with contradictory trends of modernization of the economy, social protection sphere and civil society [4; 5]; specifically business and general economic aspects of the natural asymmetries' impact on the labor market (in particular, gender, age ones) [6; 7]; assessment of the framework, scale and pace of formation of the national labor market disparities in the context of European integration processes on the macroeconomic turbulence background; modern problems of the Ukraine' labor market and employment in the context of implementing the priorities of rapid economic growth policy [8; 9]; overcoming the asymmetry of specialized and territorial labor markets (particularly rural) in a set of measures on reproduction and realization of the labor potential of industrial regions, transport complex, rural areas [10; 11].
The article aims at: the substantiation of the national labor market asymmetries' classification under the influence of globalized economic, normalized consumer, worldview and communication factors (intra-and inter-community); the systematization of Ukraine' state policy priorities on mitigation and preventive response to relevant issues, distortions and disparities in the employment and labor market, including in the direction of productive use of the asymmetries' potential, which (with the intensification of Ukraine's global integration) are always formed in the areas of a workforce' professional potential reproduction and realization.
Main results. The global phenomena mentioned above, continuing to form dynamically under the influence of scientific and technological progress, coexist with the need of the countries in the world to reproduce the principles of their own identity and sovereignty (including by ensuring proper filling and deficit control of budget, as well as a range of budgetary and non-budgetary funds to meet common public and socially necessary needs that determine the key parameters of states and sociums' sustainable development). This purpose is achieved by protecting and promoting the national producer, diversifying the economy through increasing the share of closed production cycles and sectors of innovative activities, raising productive employment through incentives of wages' and social protection parameters that can provide decent living standards to workers and their families.
Interaction of interests of powerful macro-regional and transnational economic actors, national subjects of economic competition and state formation within the framework of the highlighted trends establishes numerous asymmetries of the national labor markets which face, in particular, with: a narrowing of employment in traditional spheres; an imbalance of supply
and demand for consumer goods and services of traditional and innovative assortment in domestic and foreign markets (and in the latter case - a reduction of absolute figures and share of domestic producers' relevant export); mismatch between domestic educational, organizational, technological standards of the life spheres spectrum and modern macro-regional and world practice, and hence, as a derivative, inconsistency of available professional and qualification potential with requirements of rapidly growing specialized (including innovative) activities with foreign capital substantive share; cross-border outflow of qualified personnel and the population of older pre-working age to countries with higher living standards (wages, level and quality of life, social protection and inclusion); threats of marginalization of less competitive population, involved in economic activities in specialization' traditional areas and service sector of territorial economic complexes (especially mono-specialized), due to the establishment and deepening of unproductive and temporary (including seasonal) employment.
Thus, under the asymmetry of the national labor market, which arises under the influence of global factors' range (both general ones - in the areas of the population' natural reproduction, technological support of domestic and industrial life activities, certain cultural and ideological phenomena' spread, relevant targeted interactions' development, as well as factors caused by globalization of economic management forms and mechanisms), it is advisable to understand the imbalances and structural distortions in supplement, movement, quantitative and qualitative results of using workforce, which are temporary (acute during the planning and forecasting periods adopted in society at certain historical stage) or stagnant (up to the establishment of depressive forms of functional and territorial communities' life organization).
Many domestic and foreign researchers consider labor market asymmetries as an inherent characteristic of this territorially localized socium institution in the globalization context, appealing to the asymmetry' definition as a ratio of exchange, mutual on the one hand, whose conditions, on the other hand, create benefits for some participants [2; 3; 5; 8; 9].
Therefore, the urgent task of a long-term state strategy for the socio-economic situation' stabilization and sustainable development of Ukraine during its consistent integration into common civilization and global economic processes is to develop mechanisms for monitoring, mitigating and preventing problems, distortions and imbalances arising in areas of workforce, its professional and qualification potential' reproduction, productive use, decent wages, social protection (in particular, health care, pension provision) of hired labor and self-employed' economic activity, territorial economic complexes' specialization and diversification, efficiency' increase (among other, legalization) of internal and cross-border labor migrations under the influence of unstable processes of foreign and domestic capital (investments') movement, economic sectors and activities' transnational corporatization, modernization of technical and technological base of economic management and other life spheres, standards' unification of
economic management, labor activity, vocational education and competences, intercultural interactions and international cooperation' cardinal revival.
The range of global preconditions that can provoke the country labor market asymmetries at different stages of its integration into global civilization processes and structures can be aggregated into several groups, including factors: purely economic; technological and innovative; way and quality of life in its spheres' spectrum; practices and features of labor reproduction and use in foreign countries and world regions; interethnic and other intercultural interactions, international cohesion and cooperation.
The classification of the national labor market asymmetries that covers their market, structural, informational, gender, territorial and socio-demographic types is quite common among domestic theorists and practitioners. At the same time, the need for systematic problems' awareness, development of comprehensive program measures to mitigate and prevent imbalances and distortions in the formation and realization of workforce' supply and demand, the effectiveness of its reproduction and use in the labor market of country, which is integrating into a globalized socio-economic environment, determines the allocation of asymmetries of provision, productivity, motivation, mobility that are stimulated by such factors as institutional, purely financial and economic, organizational and technological, socio-cultural and behavioral (including information components of these factors - generators' groups).
In general, the highlighted asymmetries' classifications are characterized by interpenetration of selected groups, given the role of their qualitative characteristics for pass-through coverage of the mechanisms and results of global backgrounds' impact as potential competitive advantages of the certain civilization phenomenon and business entity that in some way functions in national socium and labor market (as one of its basic institutes).
In this context, provision asymmetries have technical, both organizational and technological, workforce (demographic), professional and qualification aspects.
The backgrounds for the formation of the first of them are the lag of the aggregate of Ukrainian economy' current technological modes from the technical and technological economic base of the world's leading countries, as well as decades-long shortcomings of domestic investment policy, which in favor of resource', raw materials' and semi-finished export orientation continues to ignore the full-value capitalization of national innovation potential, that makes further complications to the innovation process both at its start (at the stage of innovations' development) and at the final stage (commercial mastering, production replication, market promotion of innovative goods and services). Such situation, in particular, is manifested in:
- an imbalance in the structure, as well as the level of knowledge-intensive and service diversification of the national economy and its territorial complexes, which reduces the competitiveness of relevant business with domestic capital compared to the respective companies with a foreign investment' significant or dominant share;
- asymmetries of workplaces' quality of the same or close specialization of various ownership, including at the enterprises of various capacity (large, medium, small).
Workforce asymmetry (as a segment of provision asymmetry), in turn, is the result of:
- negative trends in the population' and the workforce itself reproduction in the countries of Ukrainian citizens' potential labor migration (especially neighboring countries), the demand in labor markets of which stimulates emigration, as well as cross-border legal and illegal labor migration;
- the combination of the highlighted above trend with the common civilization phenomenon of human rights' awareness and the human life value' increase, which is reflected in a significant decrease in the birth rate and the total workforce' physical reproduction;
- the structural and institutional unemployment, which ultimately lead to the economically active population' unproductive employment, unsatisfactory parameters and deterioration of the whole national economic system' competitiveness and diversification on the background of standards and management technologies (including resource provision) of foreign markets' middle-successful and leading players, in particular with the transnational organization.
It is common to consider structural unemployment as a socio-economic phenomenon caused by unbalanced structural and technological changes in the economy, accompanied by inadequate response of the educational system (particularly in aspects of imperfect forecasting of personnel training' optimal parameters by state, regional, general economic orders), whereupon of which the workforce supply' structure does not meet the needs of the country's economy by occupational groups and economic activities' types. A substantive factor of structural unemployment is the information component, reflected in the disparity of scales of common public, territorial and community, group and individual priorities and preferences on the issues of vocational guidance of the elder pre-working and working ages' population.
An explicit factor in the information flows' asymmetry (especially at the national level, on the one hand, macro-territorial, functional and community level - on the other) also causes the institutional unemployment phenomenon, which is manifested in the mismatch of quantitative and qualitative characteristics of supply and demand for training, retraining, skills development, job placement of the workforce due to insufficient development (or lack thereof) and unsatisfactory performance of functions of relevant state administration institutions and other tripartite system' components, including in aspects of limited public coverage and access to such information of the ordinary consumer and applicant in the markets of educational services and labor, respectively.
The effectiveness of mechanisms for overcoming structural and institutional unemployment in Ukraine has significantly deteriorated as a result of the decline of the system of personnel' training, skills development and retraining directly in the workplace, as well as of delays in settling non-standard (split) labor relations.
The revival of the system of personnel' training, skills development, retraining in the workplace in recent years is contributed by the implementation of standards and mechanisms of non-formal education, closely related to the spread of tariff-free pay systems based on professional standards (qualification descriptions), which outline the requirements for employees' qualifications and special knowledge, their tasks, responsibilities and specialization, agreed both by the employer and union representatives.
The aggregate segment of professional and qualification asymmetry has educational and competence, professional and qualification aspects, manifested respectively by the imbalance between labor market demand (primarily from competitive enterprises with a decent social package) and: the level and quality of economically active population' education (including skills, abilities, professional experience gained during internships at the place of study); the structure of graduates with higher and vocational education by specialties; work experience, qualification characteristics of the workforce (in particular, with documental confirmation).
The above mentioned shortcomings of logistical, investment and innovative support of a number of domestic enterprises, economic activity types, territorial economies stimulate the deepening of other kinds of the labor market asymmetries, mainly concentrated in the parameters of the workforce' development and use. Among them are asymmetries of:
- productivity (in the measurements of labor productivity properly, the level of productive employment of the economically active population, the level of employees' wages, including in comparison with the role of certain production, type of economic activity, branch in shaping the specialization of Ukrainian economy and its territorial subsystems, as well as in providing population' common public and socially necessary needs);
- motivation (along with the considered above problems of remuneration and productive employment, it covers the issues of: social protection of workers at enterprises of ownership' various forms and with employees' different number, in particular in economic activities with medium-normal and low levels of added value and rent, budget financing sectors; imbalance of the society and territorial communities' actual needs, on the one hand, well-established individual and group preferences in the career guidance of the population of older pre-working and working age, on the other hand);
- mobility (aggregated in territorial and socio-status aspects (and in the latter case - in economic, professional and qualification, socio-political types), that in a market economy are largely based on the properly economic, as well as broad community and personal factors and incentives of security, including regions' and settlement systems' economic potential, wage levels, households' cumulative financial capacity, improvement or limitation of which - more or less long-term - eventually leads to: multi-vector trends of domestic and cross-border, legal and shadow migration; dynamic changes in the competitiveness and living
standards of the formal and informal employment seekers (individuals, functional and territorial groups of population) - from improving the set of their social status characteristics, increasing the level of social inclusion, level and quality of life in general till to the vulnerable groups' and territorial communities' marginal-ization, numerous intra- and inter-sectoral, branch, professional and qualification disproportions; economic growth, economic entities' and economic systems' sustainable development or stagnation and depression of settlement systems and regions, primarily mono-specialized).
In general, the range of types and segments of labor market asymmetries is the result of a gradual more or less long-term increase in inter-sectoral, professional and qualification, consumer disparities that arise and consolidate due to the mismatch of the social production' reproducible structure to macro-regional and global conditions of resource use' efficiency, which vary throughout the innovation cycles and under the influence of acquiring macro-regional and trans-national recognition by certain management standards and economic products. Simultaneously with the investment processes optimization (in particular, territorial and sectoral investment flows) and the national economy diversification, as well as improvement of state lobbying mechanisms of national producer interests in foreign markets, there are a number of important factors in adjusting the asymmetries spectrum in national and regional labor markets, such as: optimization of social and territorial mobility' basic factors (based on a socially sufficient income level, implementation of state policy measures for regional disparities' self-regulation through the development of areas with special management regimes and innovation infrastructure, targeted job creation, promotion of local programs of recruitment and everyday life arrangement of the necessary workforce); the population "activation" (by means of stimulating entrepreneurship, self-employment and economic entities' innovation activity, legalization of cross-border and interregional labor migrations, improvement of labor resources' professional and qualification potential in accordance with the needs of implementation of the economy' modern technological mode).
Conclusions. Outlining priorities, guidelines, mechanisms, tools for balanced socio-economic development at micro-, meso- and macro-levels of society' organization (in particular, within the framework of increasing the strategies' effectiveness for the development of economy, its employment and labor resource potential in the conditions of powerful global and macro-regional asymmetries' factors) is the key responsibility of the state. Among the current priorities for regulating the labor market asymmetries in Ukraine we should mention:
- the substantiation of proposals for optimization of social dialogue, as well as labor relations' collective and contractual regulation; strengthening of the protection mechanisms of employees' rights to work decent conditions, regime and remuneration in case of actual entry into labor relations, formalized by a fixed-term employment contract or a civil law commercial
contract; the control on limiting the employers' opportunities (both domestic and foreign companies) to evade the provision of employees' social and labor guarantees, including in enterprises that change ownership, owner, organizational approaches to the main and ancillary economy activities;
- raising the status, ensuring the obj ective filling of the state labor inspectors' powers (including the staff expansion and their workload optimization); strengthening the control over the ban on "salaries in envelopes", the implementation of effective administrative mechanisms to overcome the practice of including the requirements for wages' non-disclosure in employment contracts and fixed-term contracts; the implementation of methods for tracking the practice of formal reduction of the economic entities' taxation level due to the withdrawal of the employees' part out off staff (including through small business' simplified schemes), monitoring and prevention of such illegal activities;
- the implementation of the State Classifier of Social Standards in legal and resource (financial, logistical, personnel) provision of processes of providing territorial community with socially necessary services of general and professional education, vocational guidance, retraining and advanced training in the network of state and non-state institutions of education and employment; the development and realization of content and time indicators and guidelines for the implementation of these social standards (indicators of life level and quality, territorial and interregional differences, adverse socio-economic trends' early warning), justified by the possibility of their budgetary, public solidarity and private financing;
- the improvement of the procedure for forming a regional segment of the personnel training order, taking into account the results of needs' forecasting and indicative planning by priorities of increasing the economic complex competitiveness (including in the process of expanding the presence of local businesses in foreign markets of goods and services); the optimization of mechanisms to increase the availability of free and paid educational services for socially vulnerable groups; strengthening the education system' innovative activity, increasing its role in solving territorial problems (primarily on the basis of: the formation of national and regional technology parks on the basis of leading universities; development of educational, research and production clusters in priority brunches of regional economic specialization; stimulation of nonstate support for startups); the stimulation of regional subsystems of general secondary, vocational and higher education for implementation of dual education programs in cooperation with employers' and local businesses' representative organizations;
- the promotion of dissemination of formal and non-formal education programs in the workplace, as well as the development of systems and criteria for its
certification, agreed with the employers' representatives; stimulation of the non-profit organizations' activities that provide career guidance, vocational training, counseling and employment services for population categories of various age and social status (including abroad), involving them in the realization of such territorial projects.
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