Has the economic crisis contributed to more segmentation in labour market and welfare outcomes? An analysis of EU countries (2008-2010)

Abstract

This paper analyses whether developments on the labour market and in the welfare system during the economic crisis can be seen as perpetuating the trend towards labour market segmentation or whether the crisis may actually have contributed to containing some of the divisions forged in recent decades. With regard to non-standard workers, developments during the crisis in European countries may appear, at first sight, to have run in opposite directions. While these workers have indeed, in many cases, been more affected by unemployment, serious efforts have been made in several countries to improve their access to unemployment benefits as they are usually among those considerably less likely to qualify for unemployment benefits. Due in part to these improvements, but also as a result of changing characteristics of the pool of unemployed, increasing benefit coverage rates could be observed in many countries. In others, however, trends ran in the opposite direction. Women, and particularly youth, nonetheless remain in an inferior position and, on the EU27 average, the coverage rate of the latter group has actually declined during the first period of the crisis.