Employers and Active Labour Market Policies: Typologies and Evidence

Thomas Bredgaard

doi:10.1017/s147474641700015x

Abstract

Among scholars and practitioners, there is a growing recognition of the important role of employers in the success of active labour market policies in Europe. However, there is a lack of systematic evidence about why and how employers engage in active labour market policies. In this article, the preferences and behaviour of employers towards active labour market policies are untangled. A typology of four types of employers is constructed for analytical and empirical analysis. By distinguishing positive and negative preferences from participation and non-participation, four types of employers are identified: the committed employer, the dismissive employer, the sceptical employer and the passive employer. The utility of the typology is tested with survey data on employer engagement in Danish ALMPs. The findings indicate that only a minority of Danish employers can be classified as ‘committed employers’, and the majority are either ‘dismissive’ or ‘passive’ employers. In the final section, this finding and the usefulness of the typology for analytical and empirical research is discussed.

Highlights

This year marks a decade since the England Riots of 2011 and the subsequent introduction of the Troubled Families Programme
To explore the overlap between multiple social and economic disadvantage and problematic behaviour we revisit the same dataset used in the SETF research subsequently adopted as the 120,000 troubled families statistic – the Families and Children Study (FACS)
Our reanalysis of the same dataset has shown that families with multiple social and economic disadvantages were at an increased risk of displaying problematic behaviours, such as crime and anti-social behaviour, only a small minority did so

Summary

Introduction

This year marks a decade since the England Riots of 2011 and the subsequent introduction of the Troubled Families Programme. In December 2011, in the aftermath of the riots that had happened across cities and towns in England in August of the same year, David Cameron spoke about plans to improve services for ‘troubled families’, a group the government presented as the root cause behind the riots. In his speech he indicated that the government knew exactly how many troubled families there were: Last year the state spent an estimated £9 billion on just : : : 120,000 troubled families across the country : : :. The 120,000 troubled families statistic was not created alongside the introduction of the Troubled Families Programme It was taken from government research conducted by the Social Exclusion Task Force in 2007 (SETF, 2007a, 2007b). The SETF research found that 2 per cent of families with children in Britain experienced multiple disadvantage – defined as having five or more from a list of seven social and economic disadvantages – which equated to around 120,000 families in England

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