Active Labour Market Policies Research Articles

Impact Evaluation of the Graduate Practice Intervention in Slovakia with the Application of the CART Method

Abstract In Slovakia, the contribution to graduate practice is one of the active labour market policy interventions, the main goal of which for young school-leavers is to gain first job experiences and contacts with potential employers. Among the young jobseekers, it is one of the most used interventions. This study aims to provide a counterfactual impact evaluation of this contribution on the employability of its participants and also on their monthly wages. The total period under review is 2014–2017, during which the treated individuals participated in the graduate practice during 2014–2015. Then, their course of employment and average monthly wages were monitored over a two-year impact period, covering the period 2015–2017. The study was carried out using a database of 12,953 treated eligible participants of graduate practice and 83,907 non–treated controls. The data used in the study is managed by the Central Office of Labour, Social Affairs and Family of the Slovak Republic (COLSAF SR) and the Social Insurance Agency (SIA). For the evaluation, propensity score matching was used, where the propensity scores were estimated using classification and regression trees. The results of the study show that the participants of the graduate practice were employed on average three months longer during the two-year impact period after the end of the intervention as full-time employees or self-employed, and their average salary was almost 217 euros higher than that of the control group of non-participants.

Evaluating the design and implementation of Kazakhstan’s workfare program

Workfare programs (WPs) in low- and middle-income countries have become a primary instrument to fight poverty associated with temporary economic shocks or to create a pathway out of chronic poverty. In this paper, we examine the design and implementation of a WP in Kazakhstan. We do so by executing a cost effectiveness analysis (CEA) and performing a case study analysis which investigates how the implementation process unfolded and what factors shaped it most. We find that the high cost per unit of current benefit of Kazakhstan’s WP is, in part, the result of benefit ‘leakage’ to the non-poor, high levels of informal labor, and means-testing applicants. Furthermore, overly bureaucrat requirements of official residency and household asset documents, poor staff training because of high staff turnover, staff not following standardized procedures because of low wages and corruption, and central government KPIs resulted in “creaming” of the best applicants and improper blending with other active labor market policies. Our findings provide important lessons, such as (1) formal restrictions on eligibility lead to expensive means-testing of applicants and (2) official residency and household asset documents lead to “creaming” of the best applicants.

The Effect of Welfare State Policy Spending on the Equalization of Socioeconomic Status Disparities in Mental Health.

This article examines whether and how the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and depression is modified by welfare state spending using the 2006, 2012, and 2014 survey rounds of the European Social Survey (ESS) merged with macroeconomic data from the World Bank, Eurostat, and SOCX database (N = 87,466). Welfare state spending effort divided between social investment and social protection spending modifies the classic inverse relationship between SES and depression. Distinguishing policy areas in both social investment and social protection spending demonstrates that policy programs devoted to education, early childhood education and care, active labor market policies, old age care, and incapacity account for differences in the effect of SES across countries. Our analysis finds that social investment policies better explain cross-national differences in the effect of SES on depression, implying policies focused earlier in the life course matter more for understanding social disparities in the mental health of populations.

Lost in transition? Young graduates’ employment after internships in public and private organisations

ABSTRACT Active labour market policies for young people, backed by the EU Youth Guarantee programme, led governments to trying new measures, amongst them internships for graduates of different education levels. This youth, despite being better prepared than early school leavers, still face problems during their professional insertion processes. Faulty progressions can become ‘lost in transition’ situations (Brinton [2010]. Lost in Transition: Youth, Work, and Instability in Postindustrial Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.). This paper analyzes the effects in terms of employment outcomes of a programme with two types of internships: in private firms and in public administration offices. A counterfactual analysis is carried out by matching intern groups of either type with a control group formed from candidates who ended up without an internship. The results from a first analysis with registered data were enhanced by implementing a second analysis based upon survey data, which permitted the inclusion of family legacy variables in a medium-term analysis. Estimated effects are positive and significant for participants in firms’ internships, and negative and significant for interns who worked in public organisations. Additionally, the survey uncovers that work contracts offered by firms after the programme play a positive role. The results should be very useful for decision making in terms of active measures addressing these issues for young people.

Trading labor for experience: The role of unpaid internships in shaping Active Labor Market Policies in Ireland since the Great Recession

AbstractActive Labor Market Policies (ALMPs), which include state‐funded apprenticeships, have long been used as a way of encouraging unemployed youth into skilled and semiskilled trades. However, new forms of “nonstandard” employment are now dominating young people's experience of the labor market. In fact, unpaid internships are becoming a normal part of a modern curriculum vitae and viewed as a necessary rite of passage for a successful school‐to‐work transfer, especially in the middle‐class professions. Through the use of freedom of information requests, policy documents, evaluation reports, and semistructured interviews, this paper examines the role of unpaid internships in shaping the four most recent ALMPs targeted at Irish youth since the Great Recession (2008). It theorizes that the increased prevalence of unpaid internships in the entry‐level jobs market leads to Irish policymakers designing youth unemployment ALMPs based on a private‐sector unpaid internship model. This paper will first situate youth unemployment policy within the literature on ALMPs and unpaid internships. It will then combine process tracing as a within‐case research method with a comparative case study of the four ALMPs. In conclusion, this paper finds that Irish youth unemployment policy designed during periods of economic crisis tends to prioritize the needs of host organizations and mirror employment norms established through unpaid internships. Conversely, during periods of economic growth, the Irish youth unemployment policy reverts to a more regulated model that protects the entry‐level jobs market. Furthermore, this paper recommends that European states should prohibit the use of unpaid internships to avoid further entrenching precarious and discriminatory work patterns.

Evaluation of Active Labor Market Policy Reform: Employment Outcomes of Vocational Rehabilitation Services.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of the Estonian active labor market reform in 2016, which introduced a new policy concerning vocational rehabilitation services. As a research question, we investigate how such services may have affected the employment outcomes of people with mental and/or physical impairments. Our sample includes 9244 people from 2016 to 2020, with a mean age of 46years. Due to multiple entries to the services, we have more than 11,000 cases with over 100,000 monthly observations. We use propensity score matching in combination with fixed effects panel regressions to analyze how the completion of the scheduled rehabilitation plan affected monthly employment duration. Our findings indicate that completing the rehabilitation service results on average in 2.6months longer post-rehabilitation employment, compared to matched individuals who discontinued the service. This effect was larger when already employed and male participants entered the service, while weaker effects were observed in the case of individuals with only mental disabilities. Overall, we conclude that while completing the scheduled rehabilitation plan has a positive effect on employment outcomes, still maintaining employment status seems to remain a challenge, based on the relatively modest effect sizes. Thus, we question the economic arguments behind the reform.

Activation of unemployed through social procurement: from policy to practice

In this paper, we trace how ‘social procurement’ (SP) translates from policy to practice. Launched as a driver of social innovation and sustainability, SP offers a novel way of strengthening the implementation of active labor market policies locally. Policy tools are not neutral instruments, however; they shape the substance of policy in decisive ways. That is, how tools are used determines what the policy ‘becomes’. Building on a qualitative case study, the analysis shows how local translations enabled new roles, approaches and purchasing practices, and how the practice of purchasing ‘social goods’ largely became a practice of providing competence to private enterprises. The implications of such a shift for local work on active labor market policies, as well as broader implications of attempts to use procurement to attain social sustainability, need to be further explored in future research.

Class Conflict or Consensus? Understanding Social Partner Positions on Social Policy Reforms

Abstract This paper addresses the positions of unions and employer associations towards the level of unemployment benefits and active labour market policy (ALMP). These are prominent examples of social compensation and social investment policies respectively. The new dataset ‘Reform Monitor on Political Conflict’ (ReMoPo) is based on expert interviews and a systematic text analysis of all relevant press releases. Over a time-span of 14 years (2000-2014) the data clearly shows conflict between social partners on the level of unemployment benefits whilst there is consensus towards ALMP. I show that, for unemployment benefits, different motivations do lead to different positions. However, for ALMP, different motivations combine with overlapping interests, resulting in a common positive stance. The main theoretical implications of these findings were two-fold: firstly, the type of organisation does not predict positioning on welfare state issues, whereas pragmatic considerations do. Secondly, I suspect that the divergence of motivational factors combined with a consensus towards particular measures is specific to the concept of social investment. This is because social investments (training and qualification measures in this case) were expected to have the most far-reaching and long-lasting positive effects on both individuals and companies and were therefore supported by unions and employer associations.

Better job prospects or an imperative to ‘just work’? A cross‐national study on social investment and women's employment

AbstractSocial investment policies advocate for more and better jobs by supporting families' work‐life balance and investing in human capital. But do they really help to boost employment prospects for women? Earlier literature suggests a positive relationship, but not enough attention has been paid to the type of employment, or to who the actual beneficiaries of these measures are. This article combines ISSP survey data with OECD and national data in a multilevel analysis to determine whether social investment policies benefit female employment, improve job prospects, and apply to all women irrespective of their educational level. We find that training and childcare policies are associated with higher employment levels, however, the claim that social investment increases chances for better job prospects finds little empirical support. These findings suggest that active labour market and childcare policies are associated with more women's employment, but they might still be following a push to ‘just work’.

Carbon Tax and Tourism Employment: Is There An Interplay?

The impact of the climate change response on the labour market is an important question for policymakers, while the net positive effect of green policies on the labour market is seen as one of the arguments in favour of a green transition. This is particularly important for the tourism labour market, which was severely hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. This study examined the effect of carbon taxes on tourism employment for European countries that have levied a carbon tax over the past thirty years. A macroeconomic panel data regression model ex-post study was applied by contrasting the obtained results via a robustness check. The estimation results indicate a slightly positive and significant association between the carbon tax and tourism employment, which was additionally tested by considering revenue recycling, early adopters of the carbon tax, and a higher carbon tax compared to countries with a lower carbon tax. We cannot conclude that these factors matter for tourism employment, proving the robustness of the results. Revenue-neutral carbon taxation, policies to address the skills gap, push and pull incentives, and active labour market policies to facilitate the quick re-integration of jobseekers into employment are viewed as pivotal to ensure a smoother transition toward a sustainable tourism labour market.

Social investment, labour market participation and public debt sustainability: An empirical analysis of European countries

AbstractThis article explores the role of SI Stock, Flow and Buffer policies by shedding light on their relationships with active labour market participation and public debt sustainability for a panel of 22 European countries from 1997 to 2018. We find SI Stock, Flow and Buffer to be positively correlated with labour market participation and more sustainable public debt. When disaggregating the components of SI, we detect a small degree of heterogeneity, with Active Labour Market Policies (ALMPs) negatively associated with the activity rate and positively associated with the employment rate. This result is coherent with the idea that ALMPs make a significant contribution to increasing opportunities for those already in the labour market rather than creating new jobs for those excluded from the labour market, that is, inactive individuals. In this case, our findings indicate that measures to fight social exclusion and out‐of‐work expenditure (Buffer), as well as in‐kind family benefits, are significantly associated with employability for those excluded from the labour market.

A Public Health, Whole-of-Government Approach to National Suicide Prevention Strategies

A Public Health, Whole-of-Government Approach to National Suicide Prevention Strategies

How administrative reforms influence the capacity for implementing the social investment state

For several decades, the social investment (SI) state has been heralded as the saviour of the welfare state, while at the same time being criticised for being just another instance of neoliberal downsizing of the welfare state. Recently, efforts have been made to provide clearer conceptualisations of how to assess the existence and impact of SI. However, these attempts have hitherto mainly focused on the policy functions and instruments of the SI state. This article contributes to existing research by offering a novel analytical framework on the capacity needed by street-level organisations (SLOs) to implement the central policy functions of the SI state, and by elucidating how administrative reforms influence this capacity. The article applies the framework to the implementation in Denmark of Active Labour Market Policies (ALMPs) in local job centres. This case is considered an SI ‘flagship’ in terms of formal policies, while also having undergone multiple administrative reforms, which makes it highly illustrative for the central argument of the article – that the success or failure of an SI approach is not only determined by politics and formal policies. The empirical analysis reveals how the capacity to implement SI policies has been enhanced by administrative reforms; this has been done by giving job centres more room for discretion and enhancing their ability to make long-term investments and to promote integrated service provision across different service areas. However, at the same time the local job centres remain closely monitored and controlled through an external accountability performance measurement system.

Komparácia krajín EÚ na základe nástrojov sociálnej politiky na zmiernenie finančnej zraniteľnosti domácností

The social policy of the European Union is focused mainly on the most vulnerable group of citizens. The social instruments that countries use to increase the living conditions and to decrease social exclusion and vulnerability can differ between countries. The submitted paper uses cluster analysis to compare 27 member states of the European Union based on their social policy instruments in 2019. The study analyses the dependence of social policy instruments and household financial vulnerability using correlation and regression analysis. It examines whether higher levels of social benefits and government expenditure result in lower financial vulnerability. However, the results suggest that the financial vulnerability of households is not associated with low benefits. Clusters reporting a low level of benefits recorded a low financial vulnerability of households and vice versa. Results of the correlation and cluster analysis prove that the increase of the first factor (benefits in material need, expenditure on active labour market policy, family benefits, disability benefits) and the third factor (unemployment benefits) are associated with a decrease in financial vulnerability of households.

The social policy preferences of EU employers’ organizations: An exploratory analysis

Despite decades of European social dialogue, little is known about the social policy preferences of EU employers’ organizations (EEOs). Building on the literature on industrial relations and the role of business in welfare state development, this article explores the preferences of key EEOs (BusinessEurope, SGI Europe and SMEunited) in vocational education and training (VET), active and passive labour market policies, pensions and work–family reconciliation. Software-based qualitative content analysis of 75 position papers and 19 joint declarations, triangulated with four elite semi-structured interviews, is employed to assess employers’ preferences along four national and two European dimensions. Largely in line with the power resources theory, EEOs favour cost containment and social investment, by strengthening labour market flexicurity and reducing skills mismatches through VET. Conflicting logics of membership and influence guide the actions of EEOs: members are wary of legislation impinging on national social policy traditions; yet, greater European assertiveness makes lobbying efforts unavoidable.

Comparative impacts of the COVID‐19 pandemic on work and employment—Why industrial relations institutions matter

AbstractThis introduction assesses the international impacts of the COVID‐19 pandemic on work and employment. It outlines conceptually why industrial relations institutions matter for shaping policy choices across different countries. This includes countries in the Global South that are not covered by conventional varieties of capitalism theories. An important focus is what IR institutions and policies played a protective role in the decommodification of labor during the pandemic, notably short‐time working (furlough) schemes, tripartite cooperative pacts, works councils, collective bargaining, and active labor market policies. IR institutions continue to matter, and the contributions in this Special Issue can inform future research.

Education and active labour market policy complementarities in promoting employment: Reinforcement, substitution and compensation.

This paper theorises and empirically assesses how education and active labour market policy (ALMP) relate to each other in shaping individuals' employment chances in Europe. It provides a theoretical base for assessing policy complementarities building on sociological skill-formation literature, varieties of capitalism and social investment literature. Two hypotheses of complementarity are advanced: reinforcement whereby higher investment in general skills via education boosts ALMP effectiveness; and substitution-compensation whereby investments in either policy suffice, rendering individual employment chances less dependent on ALMPs at higher (prior) educational investment levels. The advanced theoretical propositions are empirically tested by looking at how individual employment chances are affected by national ALMP efforts conditional on workforce education, distinguishing between individual- and national-level educational attainment. Analyses draw on micro-level EU-SILC longitudinal data 2003-2015 from 29 European countries and 285 country-years applying mixed-effects dynamic panel regression models. Results highlight the complementarity of education in the functioning of ALMPs and show that the education-ALMP interplay follows different dynamics when individual or national education are considered, with substitution-compensation for the former and reinforcement for the latter. Higher individual educational attainment is associated with lower marginal returns from national ALMP efforts, with higher ALMP effectiveness among the lower-educated. By contrast, higher national educational attainment is associated with increased ALMP effectiveness, with ALMPs tending to be far less effective at low levels of highly educated workforce. Different interaction patterns are observed for youth, indicating increased difficulty in activating this risk group.

Active labor market as an instrument to reduce unemployment

In order to have an impact on the labor market, welfare states must implement active labor market policies (ALMPs). The effectiveness of ALMPs has only been the subject of a few numbers of studies, the majority of which only take into account the short-term effects of ALMPs and use aggregate data. We examine the impact of public spending on female and male unemployment rates by disaggregating data on unemployment for nine OECD countries and focusing on long-term effects of ALMPs, primarily to determine whether there is evidence of causation between the variables. Based on the bootstrap panel Granger causality test, the estimates account for cross-sectional dependence, slope heterogeneity, and structural breaks. Although the causality direction varies by country, our study demonstrates that ALMPs are helpful at lowering unemployment. It's interesting to notice that these policies appear to have the most positive effects for women. Policymakers must provide appropriate support for ALMPs in order to effectively lower unemployment.

Workforce Participation in Active Labour Market Policies: A Comparative Analysis in EU Member States

Workforce Participation in Active Labour Market Policies: A Comparative Analysis in EU Member States

Arbeitsmarktpolitische Maßnahmen Und Ihre Evaluierung: Eine Bestandsaufnahme

( Title: Active Labor Market Policy and its Evaluation: The Current State of Affairs) Despite the considerable effort and the large financial expenditures spent on measures of Active Labor Market Policy in Germany, relatively little is known about their actual impact. To the contrary, past evaluation efforts typically failed to construct a credible counterfactual situation - a precise statement of what would have happened in the absence of the policy intervention. This paper argues that Germany lags clearly behind the current evaluation practice of other advanced economies, and in information about the efficacy of its policies. The paper discusses the methodological problems surrounding the evaluation of policy interventions and possible empirical strategies for their solution. The available scientific evidence on the impact of labor market programs is surveyed briefly, and several lessons are extracted on the design of future programs and their evaluation.