The Role of Long-Term Unemployment in the Dynamics of the Labour Market

Abstract

Mentoring, job search programmes, further training and support to facilitate daily living are the primary tools for public bodies to deal with long-term unemployment. In a report published in 2019, the European Commission assessed the progress made by Member States following the 2016 Council Recommendation on the integration of the long-term unemployed into the labour market. An important factor in examining the dynamics of the labour market is that long-term unemployment generally affects well-defined groups of people (such as the undereducated, the disabled, disadvantaged minorities) on the one hand and that, though the long-term unemployed make up half of the total number of unemployed persons in the Union, they account for less than a fifth of the participants in active labour market measures on the other hand. All this has a wide potential for development. The study examines in three parts the conceptual, practical, and regulatory contexts of long-term unemployment, taking into account the aspirations of the Union, the regulatory issues to be answered by national legislators, and, finally, the internal dynamics of the labour market.