The Welfare State as Employer

Abstract

This chapter introduces the concept of public employment regimes to understand why reform trajectories aligning public to private employment take on different pathways and reflect differences in welfare regimes and political economy types referring to OECD countries. After mapping the state of the art on the relevance and development of public employment in Western welfare states, the chapter presents a comparative evaluation of the distinct features of public employment regimes. Specifically, we compare the costs and size of government employment (capturing the fiscal side of public employment regimes), the extent to which females and migrants are represented in the public workforce (referring to the societal integration function of the state as an employer), and public–private-sector wage differentials (referring to the role of the state as employer for the private sector). The chapter concludes by outlining future trends and the need for further research from a global perspective.