Abstract

Labour Market of Care: Calculating the Headcount in Long-Term Care and Job Tenure

Compared to all other approaches for calculating the headcount in long-term care that are criticized by Professor Simon, the present article is the only one that presents a comprehensive labour market model that includes both a supply- and a demand-side function. A time-series approach is used and is tested for validity by standard empirical tests. A comparable approach to model the supply side of the long-term care labour market, using the same quality standards as in the present article, cannot be found in the existing literature. Future projections of personnel requirements should focus on refining the method of the presented model and on improving the quality by including other high comprehensive data sets. As Simon suggests, the existing approach could usefully be extended to cover other health care sectors, if the available data improve accordingly. By enlarging the focus, the substitution of other care jobs from different health-care sectors could be considered in the model as well. From today's perspective the presented model can be seen as a suitable concept for modelling future labour demand as it leads to highly significant results.