Active Labor Market Policies In Europe

Measures of Active Labor Market Policy - such as training, wage subsidies, public employment measures, and job search assistance - are widely used in European countries to combat unemployment. This study provides novel insight on this important policy issue by discussing the role of the European Commission's Employment Strategy, reviewing the experiences made in European states, and giving the first ever quantitative assessment of the existing cross-country evidence.

This book offers a close examination of current labor market and unemployment policies throughout Europe from 2010, when post-crisis austerity became the norm, to the present. Expert contributors present detailed national case studies, showing how policies have changed--or, in some cases, remained largely the same--in this period; taken together, the case studies enable researchers to make fruitful comparisons across the continent and determine what direction policy has been moving and whether those policy changes have been effective.

Researchers in policy and social sciences from across Europe explore a number of perspectives for developing preventive labor market policies in the continent against the background of existing experience with national strategies and the increasing influence on labor market programs by the European Union. They focus on the extent to which the conditional framework is changing and how programs and instrument must respond, what response mechanisms characterize national strategies, and what learning processes can be triggered by exchanging national experience and what role the European Union organs play in such exchanges. The 12 papers are from a workshop for which no date nor location are identified. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR

Published in 1999, Working Europe: Reshaping European employment systems offers a fresh analysis of recent changes in labour markets and the restructuring of welfare states. The analyzes presented in the articles not only focus on labour market changes, but take up the important issues of: * How labour markets have been regulated and directed * How the various social security systems offered by the welfare state are related to the questions of labour markets and employment systems * How efficient labour market policies are in reducing unemployment * How employment is locally created and initiated * How the gender system is related to employment systems. This book is the first to offer a full picture of the restructuring of the employment systems and the complex relationship between employment, the welfare state and concepts of work.

This book investigates the changing patterns of labour market and unemployment policies in EU member states during the period since fiscal austerity took hold in 2010 during the deepest postwar recession in Europe. Looking at the big European picture, do we see a convergence or a divergence in labour market and unemployment policy trends and outputs? Has labour market insecurity increased or decreased and can these changes be associated with the observed changes in labour market policies and macroeconomic conditions? Written by leading experts in the field, the book provides detailed national case studies from across the EU, which span labour market regimes and intensities of fiscal pressures to explore whether, and if so how, retrenchment or expansion have taken place across different types of labour market policies and how these changes have been distributed across the well-protected and the less well-protected labour market populations.

The process of transition to a market economy and integration into the EU has strained the labour markets of central and eastern European countries, and these developments pose a number of challenges to their social policies. This volume presents the contributions given at an international labour conference held in Austria in June 2001 to investigate these issues. It provides the latest labour trends in EU accession countries and compares them to previous experiences of European integration. It reviews existing labour market policies and social protection mechanisms, and discusses alternative strategies for employment creation in the region.

First published in 1998, this volume examines the performance of labour markets against the background of different economic and institutional settings in Western and Eastern Europe. The book gives a clear picture of the mosaic of impressive transformations presently taking place in Western and Eastern European labour markets and provides access to information which was previously either widely dispersed or non-existent. The book gives detailed information about how countries and regions deal with transformations described. The substantive country-wide and regional diversity that is discussed allows the reader to understand the role of labour and institutions in the development of countries and regions. The book is written by labour market and regional experts from the various countries concerned.

This book presents the proceedings of a conference on labour markets. It advances thinking on new policy measures, such as active labour market policies and measures to "make work pay".