Active Labour Market Policies Research Articles

Spatial diversity of effectiveness of forms of professional activisation in Poland in years 2008?2014 by poviats

Research background: Because the active labour market policy requires high resources, it is important to analyse the effectiveness of its instruments. For the unemployment, it is essential to identify the groups of persons threatened by the long-term unemployment, to assess the impact of programmes on exit from unemployment and monitoring the disbursement of funds.
 Purpose of the article: The goal of the article was identification of clusters of poviats in Poland with respect to cost and employment effectiveness of basic forms of professional activisation in the years 2008?2014.
 Methods: The poviats were clustered by means of the k-means method. Variables were standardised and the number of clusters was determined by means of the v-fold cross-validation.
 Findings & Value added: The analysis did not allow to unambiguously specify areas in Poland with better use of funds allocated in the activisation programmes. The poviats in the middle-east Poland were generally characterized by worse values of effectiveness. However, the unemployment rate in these areas was relatively small. On the contrary, the poviats in the north-east Poland had high unemployment rate and the funds were used effectively. Assessment of effectiveness of forms of professional activisation is very important because the activities of poviat labour offices influence the counteraction to unemployment.

The impact of Active Labour Market Policies on health outcomes: a Scoping review.

Since the last Western great recession of 2008, an increasing interest on the effects of Active Labour Market Policies (ALMPs) on improving health has emerged. The aim of our review is to synthesize evidence on the effectiveness of ALMPs and whether some types of ALMP are more effective. Using the Scoping review methodology, we conducted a literature review in PubMed/MEDLINE, Scopus and Web of Science and selected articles published between 1990 and 2017 in high income countries. We applied four sequential phases of document screening to the list of retrieved articles. Of the 416 documents detected in the search, 36 documents were finally selected. Most of them focused on mental health and related components (72.2%) and found positive results at least in one outcome (80.6%). The ALMPs reported mainly attempt to build capacity through job search assistance (31.6%) with a component on mental health, showing positive results on health; some offer job training (16.7%) and few subsidized employment (8.3%), showing more controversial results, although mostly positive. The rest include a combination of different types of ALMPs. This review shows that ALMPs have a positive impact on health and quality of life. There are relatively few studies of the impact of ALMPs on general health, and most of the studies found are focused on Anglo-Saxon and Nordic countries. The most significant knowledge gaps are the mechanisms involved in achieving this improvement, and above all the differential health impacts according to axes of inequality and welfare state.

Encouraging real or make-believe citizen-workers? Narratives of self-realization versus disabling support-to-work contexts by individuals with High Functioning Autism

Sweden, like other Western countries, has a disability legislation that coexists with the Active Labour Market Policies. ALMP address a discourse emphasizing the importance of the able and productive ‘citizen-worker’, who is expected to craft his/her own success through meaningful personal goals and ambitions. This discourse also impacts disability groups who are actualized for support-to-work interventions, such as people with high-functioning autism (HFA). The objective of this paper is to analyse how narratives targeting ambitions and self-realisation in work life are expressed by individuals with HFA in relation to the citizen-worker discourse. This ethnographic study comprises 26 qualitative interview narratives by 11 participants with HFA. Findings indicate that the participants have developed a strong citizen-worker identity. The will is an essential point of gravity, expressed through notions of individual meaningfulness and ambitions of being perceived as resources in any vocational context. Barriers to these ambitions are experienced as personally counteractive support-to-work practices. These results suggest that disability legislation and policies are caught in a mantra of stagnating normalisation, resulting in disability-worker interventions that are incompatible with meanings emphasized in the citizen-worker discourse, which is the new ‘normal’ of today.

Regional Wage Responsiveness to Unemployment — Rural–Urban Heterogeneity and Policy Implications

AbstractPrevious studies of regional wage formation in Norway have indicated low regional wage responses to regional unemployment. However, previous analyses have not investigated whether wages are more rigid in rural areas than in urban areas, which in the case of Norway is important for the efficiency of regional differentiated payroll taxes. In the paper, the authors focus on the rural–urban nature of the wage curve in Norway. We re‐estimate the wage curve on the basis of a large Norwegian microlevel dataset covering the entire Norwegian labour market during the years 2008–13. Our findings are rural–urban heterogeneity in the wage curve, with higher unemployment elasticity of pay in the urban region than in the rural regions. The elasticity of the average rural wage curve is about 70 per cent that of the of the urban wage curve. The authors conclude that to achieve the goals of regional policy in Norway, more rigid wages in rural areas seem to be an argument for continuing to have an active labour market policy for rural regions.

The making of gendered ‘migrant workers’ in youth activation: The case of young Russian-speakers in Finland

The article focuses on young Russian-speaking migrants’ day-to-day institutional encounters with labour market activation policies in Finland. The analysis contributes to the discussion on labour activation through analysing the workings of gender, migration and racialisation in welfare encounters through ethnographically grounded research. The argument of the article is two-fold. First, it argues that migrant and racialised minority populations are sustained in a ‘migrant worker’ subject position not only through exclusion from rights and legal status, but also through the targeted inclusion of the ‘undeserving’ poor with formal rights into worker-citizenship through workfare. Second, the article shows racialisation of ‘migrant workers’ as a gendered process with essentialised gendered logics of what skills migrant men and women supposedly possess ‘naturally’. Activation thus maintains and exacerbates the segregation of migrant and racialised youth into gendered and racialised labour markets. The analysis is based on ethnographic fieldwork in youth career counselling in a metropolitan area of Finland in 2015–2016.

Exploring activation: A cross-country analysis of active labour market policies in Europe

Over recent decades, a wide literature has been devoted to the analysis of the evolution of Labour Markets Policies in the so-called “Activation paradigm” (Bonoli, 2010). Existing contributions are mainly based on qualitative case-studies or cross-country empirical analyses aimed at investigating the determinants of national expenditure. By adopting a multivariate strategy based on the integrate implementation of Principal Component Analysis and Cluster Analysis, this paper provides an innovative study on the evolution and composition of Labour Market Policies in 14 EU countries (1991-2015). Results highlight an increasing heterogeneity in countries’ expenditure behaviours until the economic crisis and a significant reduction of differences in the aftermath of 2008. Moreover, the empirical analysis allows to identify clusters and latent spending behaviours (human capital investment and pro-market orientation) that support and enrich the literature on types and latent dimensions of Activation expenditure.

Immigrants and Poverty. The Role of Labour Market and Welfare State AccessEugster, BeatriceLondon/New York, ECPR Press/Rowman&Littlefield (2018), 259 p., ISBN 978‐1785522932

Book Review: Are immigrants poorer than natives? Which categories of immigrants are poorer? Do immigrants’ poverty patterns follow the traditional welfare state regime typology? Can institutions–particularly social rights in terms of access to welfare provision and the labour market–explain the variation in immigrants’ poverty levels? These are the fundamental questions that Beatrice Eugster analyses in her new book.

The quest for sustainable employment: Challenges faced by young people during the job‐search process

AbstractYoung people who are unable to find and sustain employment are at risk for long‐term social and economic exclusion. Active labour market policies (ALMPs) addressing the problem of youth unemployment have focused on building the employability skills of young job seekers to expand their employment opportunities. Yet research exploring how young people navigate the job‐search process is limited. Drawing on interviews with young Australian job seekers and their employment consultants, this article addresses the questions of how young people navigate entry into employment through the job‐search process and what challenges they face. The study revealed three common frustrations experienced by the young people during their job‐search: employers' expectations of relevant work experience in the young person's preferred occupation, being required to apply for jobs not aligned with their career aspirations, and the impact of personal factors on their ability to confidently present themselves to prospective employers. The findings highlight the need for ALMPs and employers to facilitate positive employability support mechanisms that will build a stable platform from which young people can build a trajectory towards sustainable employment to reduce long‐term youth unemployment.

Employment effects of investments in public employment services for disadvantaged social assistance recipients

Across the OECD countries, there is a growing consensus in favour of targeting active labour market policies (ALMP) on the disadvantaged unemployed and persons outside the labour force to increase their employment prospects. Despite increased efforts, little is known about what works for getting persons with physical, mental, and social problems into employment. Using difference-in-differences regressions and propensity score matching on longitudinal population register data from Denmark, we investigate the effects of investment in public employment services for disadvantaged social assistance recipients, where social worker caseloads have been severely reduced and active employment measures for the target group have intensified. We find significant and robust positive effects of intervention on subsequent employment outcomes for disadvantaged, hard-to-employ social assistance recipients, suggesting the need for an increased focus on this target group in future research and in the design and implementation of ALMPs.

Answering economic inequality other than with populism and protectionism: the Danish formula of inclusive capitalism

EU politics have experienced vast changes since 2014 from the rise of anti-globalization populist right parties to Brexit. Similarly, populist and nationalist sentiments also appeared in some Southeast Asian democracies such as Taiwan and the Philippines. Despite their national and regional differences, one common characteristic of these developments was that it was those left-behind and economically disadvantaged voters who delivered such results. Trade protectionism and populist nationalism were their answers to ever-growing economic inequality. The growing economic inequality thus has become a common policy challenge to both European and Asian leadership. While political and business elites appealed to inclusive capitalism to address the economic inequality, no holistic, realistic policy combination was ever proposed. This paper is an attempt to translate inclusive capitalism from aspiration to systematic policy actions by employing an Inclusive Development Index (IDI) to the study of an indicative country—Denmark. It was found that those areas which Denmark has been performing well in were areas surrounding acquired equal opportunities: quality public education, health and active labor market policies for developing personal capability from childhood to adulthood, and uncorrupted public services and business-friendly legal and tax regimes for facilitating market competition from business creation to operation, especially for small businesses. Governance was a key to the functioning of this self-producing policy ecosystem, centrally staged as a big investor and enabler for both labor and capital. The distinctive thinking underpinning policy-making—treating economic policies as social policies and vice versa—reconciled economic growth and distributive justice simultaneously, resulting in inclusive capitalism in day-to-day realities. The Danish formula has shown that it was not capitalism that needed to reform, it was the prevailing liberalist orthodoxy that guided governance that was in desperate need of an overhaul.

Labour market regulation and subjective well‐being in low‐income countries

AbstractA growing literature suggests social democratic policies, as exemplified by the welfare state and active labour market policies, promote higher levels of life satisfaction compared to the neoliberal agenda of austerity, smaller government and more ‘flexible’ labour markets. In this article, this inquiry is extended to low‐income countries. A theoretical argument is developed for why labour market regulation (LMR) (rather than social welfare spending or the general size of government) is a more appropriate locus of attention outside of the industrial democracies. The relationship between LMR and several measures of well‐being is then empirically evaluated, finding robust evidence that people live more satisfying lives in countries that more stringently regulate their labour market. Moreover, it is found that positive benefits of LMR on well‐being are the largest among individuals with lower incomes. The implications for public policy and the study of human well‐being are discussed.

Does on-the-job training help graduates find a job? Evidence from an Italian region

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to evaluate a recent training programme for graduates, implemented in Italy and entitled Work Experience Laureati and Laureate, i.e. Work Experience for Graduates. The aim of the programme was to increase the career prospects of unemployed graduates in the region of Umbria.Design/methodology/approachThe authors rely on administrative data and matching methods to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention in terms of employability of participants.FindingsThe results show that participants are more likely to be employed and to sign an apprenticeship contract within the region boundaries. The authors also find substantial differences in employability and type of contract by gender, with men having a higher probability of finding a job (permanent contract and apprenticeship). The authors show that this may be explained by the different choices in terms of field of study, with males being more prone to enrol in scientific areas and females in the humanities.Research limitations/implicationsIt is an intervention implemented in one Italian region.Originality/valueThis is one of the few studies that analyses the effectiveness of active labour market policies targeting unemployed graduates, especially in the Italian context. The authors rely on different administrative data sources that allow them to evaluate the effectiveness of the programme.

Levelling the playing field? Active labour market policies, educational attainment and unemployment

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate how active labour market policy (ALMP) training programmes and hiring subsidies increase or decrease differences in the unemployment risk between lesser and higher educated people during an economic downturn. A focus is put on potential job competition dynamics and cumulative (dis)advantages of the lesser and higher educated.Design/methodology/approachThe paper uses multi-level data. The fifth wave (2010) of the European Social Survey was used and combined with macro-level data on labour market policies of the OECD. The sample consisted of 18,172 observations in 19 countries.FindingsThe results show that higher levels of participation and spending on training policies are related to a smaller difference in the unemployment risks of the educational groups. Higher training policy intensity is associated with a lower unemployment risk for the lesser educated and a higher unemployment risk for the higher educated. This implies that the lesser educated are better able to withstand downward pressure from the higher educated, thereby, reducing downward displacement during an economic downturn. Hiring subsidies do not seem to be associated with the impact of education on unemployment.Originality/valueThe paper adds to the discussion on ALMP training and hiring subsidies that are primarily rooted in the human capital theory and signalling theory. Both theories ignore the social context of labour market behaviour. The job competition theory and cumulative (dis)advantage theory add to these theories by focussing on the relative position of individuals and the characteristics that accompany the social position of the individual.

The impact of the European Youth Guarantee on active labour market policies: A convergence analysis

The European Union’s (EU) Youth Guarantee aims to improve the labour market situation of young people. Rather than prescribing a uniform policy model, it acknowledges that supportive measures need to align with national, regional and local circumstances. It thus seeks to promote mutual policy learning through the open method of coordination. As an innovative measure, the EU has deployed funding programmes to support the domestic measures related to the Youth Guarantee. We therefore examined in this study whether this mix of recommendations and financial incentives has entailed a convergence of member state policies. Our analysis of policy outputs for the period 2007−2014 yields a mixed empirical picture. There is catching‐up convergence regarding policies’ sectoral coverage but increasing divergence concerning the number of adopted policy instruments. The first two years of financial incentives did not produce any effect on enhancing policy experimentation among less active member states. We offer an optimistic and a pessimistic interpretation of these findings.

Active labour market policy in the UK: At a (local) crossroads?

Active labour market policy has developed into a widely used and seemingly embedded approach to addressing worklessness, both in the UK and internationally. But the future of UK active labour market policy looks far from certain. Some recent developments suggest demise and diminution. But at the same time there is also evidence of more positive points, including increasing recognition of the importance of employer involvement and activity at local level. Possible future trajectories are considered in the light of emerging developments, and two potential scenarios for future UK active labour market policy are posited: ‘less support, more sticks’ and an ‘active local labour markets approach’.

Active Labor Market Policies: Lessons from Other Countries for the United States

US labor force participation has been weak in recent decades, especially during the recovery of the financial crisis of 2007–09. This paper examines several programs that governments in other advanced industrial countries have established to help jobless workers continue to seek employment, not drop out of the labor force, and ultimately find jobs. These programs more actively support out-of-work citizens by facilitating matches between workers and firms, helping workers in their job searches, and sometimes creating jobs when none are available in the private sector. The evidence presented in this paper concludes that job placement services, training, wage subsidies, and other labor adjustment policies can be used to successfully help workers find employment and remain tied to the labor market. By contrast, direct job creation through public works projects and other government programs are less effective in helping workers over the long run.

Social Investment, Employment Outcomes and Policy and Institutional Complementarities: A Comparative Analysis across 26 OECD countries

Social investment has become a widely debated topic in the comparative welfare state literature. To date, there are, however, only a couple of systematic comparative empirical analyses that focus on the employment outcomes associated with social investment. This study contributes to the social investment literature by empirically analysing the extent to which variation in employment outcomes across 26 OECD countries over the period 1990-2010 can be explained by effort on five social investment policies using time-series cross-sectional analyses. Apart from focusing on employment rates, we additionally explore associations with qualitative aspects of the employment outcomes relying on novel indicators. The analyses account for theoretically relevant confounding variables that were omitted in existing studies, notably labour market institutions. We find robust evidence for a positive association between effort on active labour market policies and employment rates. For other policies we obtain mixed results, dependent on the employment outcome being studied. Subsequently, we explore the role of policy and institutional complementarities in the assessment of the employment effects of social investment policies. We show how social investment policies interact and how their effect is moderated by effort on other policies. Additionally, our analysis shows that the complementarity of social investment policies varies across welfare state regimes. Finally, explorative analyses suggest that there are positive synergies between more and better jobs, which could in part be attributable to effort on social investment.

Active social and labour market policy towards people aged 50 years and more

Active social and labour market policy towards people aged 50 years and more

Catching Up or Lagging Behind? The Long-Term Business and Innovation Potential of Subsidized Start-Ups Out of Unemployment

From an active labor market policy perspective, start-up subsidies for unemployed individuals are very effective in improving long-term labor market outcomes for participants. From a business perspective, however, the assessment of these public programs is less clear since they might attract individuals with low entrepreneurial abilities and produce businesses with low survival rates and little contribution to job creation, economic growth, and innovation. In this paper, we use a rich data set to compare participants of a German start-up subsidy program for unemployed individuals to a group of regular founders who started from non-unemployment and did not receive the subsidy. The data allows us to analyze their business performance up until 40 months after business formation. We find that formerly subsidized founders lag behind not only in survival and job creation, but especially also in innovation activities. The gaps in these business outcomes are relatively constant or even widening over time. Hence, we do not see any indication of catching up in the longer run. While the gap in survival can be entirely explained by initial differences in observable start-up characteristics, the gap in business development remains and seems to be the result of restricted access to capital as well as differential business strategies and dynamics. Considering these conflicting results for the assessment of the subsidy program from an ALMP and business perspective, policy makers need to carefully weigh the costs and benefits of such a strategy to find the right policy mix.

Innovation and growth of skills

This paper analyses the strategic and legislative framework of innovation and growth of skills in Croatia. Emphasis is placed on the life-long learning system, especially the legal duty of the employer to education and training of his or her employees. The paper will present the results of the research carried out in the scope of the scientific research project Flexicurity and New Forms of Employment about the issues of flexicurity, atypical and new forms of employment, as well as the respective opinions of the employers operating in several branches and trade-unions. Finally, the author analyses different active labour market policy measures directed to the growth of skills and innovations.