Teacher shortages and the business cycle

Abstract

The ability of the public sector to recruit skilled workers is important for the quality of public sector services. Centralized and rigid pay systems in the public sector might reduce labour supply and lead to shortages of qualified personnel in areas and periods with strong outside labour markets. This paper shows that teacher shortages measured by the share of teachers without approved education are strongly procyclical in Norway. Using a large panel of Norwegian local governments for 1981-2002 and exploiting the rigid wage system, we find a sizeable negative relationship between teacher shortages and the regional unemployment rate.

Weak Markets, Strong Teachers: Recession at Career Start and Teacher Effectiveness

“…3 Consistent with this model, existing studies show that the supply of workers for public sector jobs in the US is higher during economic downturns (e.g., Krueger, 1988;Borjas, 2002). Falch et al (2009) document the same pattern for the teaching profession in Norway. Teach For America, an organization that recruits academically talented college graduates into teaching, saw a marked decline in the number of qualified applicants during the recent economic recovery (New York Times, 2015).…”

Do Smaller Classes Always Improve Students’ Long‐run Outcomes?

“…If the use of non‐certified teachers increases, it reflects low interest for vacant positions, lack of options in the schools’ hiring processes, and thus low expected teacher quality. The share of certified teachers is thus a reasonable indicator of teacher quality, and is previously used with this interpretation by Bonesrønning, Falch and Strøm () and Falch, Johansen and Strøm ()…”

“…() find that it depends on the student composition of the school, while Falch et al . () find that it depends on the business cycle. There are other potential factors, such as features of the school leadership.…”

Selecting or rewarding teachers? International evidence from primary schools

“…Nagler, Piopiunik and West (2015) obtain analogous results for more recent years by exploiting business cycle conditions at a teacher's start of his or her career as a source of exogenous variation in the outside options of potential teachers. Similarly, Falch et al (2009) measure teacher shortages in Norway as the share of teachers without certified credentials, finding a negative relationship between teacher shortages and regional unemployment rates in the period from 1981-2002; they explain this effect as a cause of the centralised and rigid pay system in the public sector that tends to reduce labour supply and lead to shortages of qualified personnel. Hence, according to these authors, the teaching profession would remain a residual one because of the lack of career advancement, leading to a counter-cyclical selection into teacher training: namely, the more favourable the economy is, the lower the probability will be for the best students to opt for a teaching career (see also Dolton et al, 2003).…”