Library & Cultural Services: Economics: Labour Economics. Work. Employment

Labour Economics

See also the Business & Management Subject Guide section on human resource management for further resources relating to work and employment.

See the Business & Management Subject Guide for resources relating to women. The Sociology Subject Guide may also be helpful

Bureau of Labor Statistics
Government body offering official stats on: employment, unemployment, pay, benefits, productivity, working conditions, time use, prices, spending, inflation. Includes detailed survey data, e.g. Current Population Survey (similar to the Labour Force Survey in the UK)
International Labour Office Statistics & Databases
Portal to various ILO databases (main ones are listed below)

ILOSTAT is the ILOs key database, with statistics for over 200 countries and data back to 1945 for some countries

ILO Employment Policy Gateway provides details of national and youth employment policies by country

Labour Force Surveys

INWORK wages & living conditions

ILO Research Repository makes ILO publications freely available (including flagship Key indicators of the labour market) and supersedes Labordoc

More recently, the ILOs Observatory on AI & Work in the Digital Economy

Layoffs.fyi
Free website tracking downsizing in high tech companies around the world since the Pandemic
Leximetrics
Project of the Centre for Business Research (Cambridge), freely accessible dataset: Labour Regulation Index (117 countries, 1970-2013), plus other indices of shareholder & creditor protection.
Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) England
LEO was created by the Department for Education & contains anonymised information on the characteristics, education, employment, benefits, and earnings of members of the British public. Potential to evidence longer-term labour market outcomes and educational pathways of millions of individuals (1995-). Accredited researchers can apply to access the Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) standard extract via the ONS Secure Research Service
OECD/AIAS ICTWSS (Institutional Characteristics of Trade Unions, Wage Setting, State Intervention and Social Pacts)
Covers 56 countries from 1960-2020
and four key elements of modern political economies: trade unionism, wage setting, state intervention and social pacts. The database contains annual data for all OECD and EU member states and some emerging economies Brazil; China; India; Indonesia; Russia; and South Africa.
OECD Indicators of Employment Protection

Child Labour

Data on child labour is primarily collected through periodic survey, often at intervals of several years or more. Some useful sources of data are

Bureau of International Labor Affairs
ILAB is part of the US Dept. of Labor and produces three reports: Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor; the List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor; and the List of Products Produced by Forced or Indentured Child Labor
ILO-IPEC SIMPOC
Statistical Information & Monitoring Programme on Child Labour
UNICEF MICS
(Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey) programme and see its Child Labour theme page for aggregated statistics.
World Bank LSMS
(Living Standards Measurement Survey) data. Aggregated data available through World Development Indicators.

Trades Unions

OECD/AIAS ICTWSS (Institutional Characteristics of Trade Unions, Wage Setting, State Intervention and Social Pacts)
Covers 56 countries from 1960-2020
and four key elements of modern political economies: trade unionism, wage setting, state intervention and social pacts. The database contains annual data for all OECD and EU member states and some emerging economies Brazil; China; India; Indonesia; Russia; and South Africa.

For the UK the Labour Force Survey is the official source of data used to measure trade union membership, but data is also available from the following surveys: Workplace Employment Relations Survey; Skills and Employment Survey; Understanding Society (all available through UKDS)

TUC Library
Huge resource for British labour history. The TUC Library is now housed at London Metropolitan University Library. Includes the digitised TUC annual reports 1868-1968 at
http://www.unionhistory.info/reports/index.php
The archives of the TUC are deposited with University of Warwick Library, some documents have been digitised - https://warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/archives_online/digital/