ESRA 2027 sessions by theme

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Labor market research has a long tradition in analyzing societal phenomena, underlying mechanisms and their effects on organizational and individual levels. In this regard, workplaces are an important social context in which individual opportunities, experiences, and outcomes are shaped. Understanding these processes therefore requires data that capture not only employees themselves, but also the organizations in which they work. While such data have traditionally been created through dedicated surveys or administrative records, new digital data sources are expanding the range of possible data and opening up new ways of studying the relationship between employees and workplaces.

Researchers can increasingly draw on career-oriented social networks, online employer-review platforms, administrative records, business registers, and other digital traces to identify workplaces, reconstruct employment trajectories, or enrich employee survey data with organizational information. Such approaches may reduce dependence on respondents’ participation and open new possibilities for studying employees, workplaces, and the connection of both. These developments can particularly be relevant for research on sensitive workplace phenomena, such as discrimination, unequal treatment, working conditions, or the experiences of minority and otherwise vulnerable groups. At the same time, these new designs raise important methodological questions. How can employees and employers be reliably linked across data sources? What kinds of selection and coverage errors arise when links are constructed from digital or administrative data? How should researchers address consent, privacy, measurement error, and changes in employment relationships over time?

This session invites contributions on emerging designs for labor market research on organizational- and individual levels, including survey-based, administrative, platform-based, and hybrid approaches. We particularly welcome papers that evaluate linkage strategies, compare alternative designs, assess data quality and representativeness, or demonstrate how novel forms of employer–employee linkage can enable substantive research that would otherwise be difficult to conduct.