Not just arms and legs: employer perspectives on student workers

ABSTRACT The student workforce plays a substantial part in several low-paying industries such as retail and hospitality, and this has grown over time. However, there has been little recent research. The usual assumption is that students compete successfully with the local labour force for low-skill, part-time jobs, but there is little evidence for this. Using results from twelve employer interviews located in two cities in the United Kingdom (Bristol and Cardiff), we reconsider employers’ perspectives on taking on students. We find that, rather than seeing the labour market as an undistinguished mass of ‘arms and legs’, employers are well aware of the pros and cons of employing students, and use this information to build flexible workforces which complement the local non-student labour supply. This fits into the well documented model of the ‘core’ and ‘periphery’ workforces. We do find evidence of indirect competition, through changes in the way jobs are advertised and filled. We also note the growth in managers who have themselves worked as students may be changing the ‘frame of reference’ of those managers, further shifting the demand for student workers in the long term.