The effectiveness of lifelong learning policies on youth employment (original) (raw)

Educationalisation of youth unemployment through lifelong learning policies in Europe

European Educational Research Journal

In the aftermath of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, European authorities reinforced the economic objectives of European lifelong learning policy, promoting employability solutions to address youth unemployment, and increasing their political influence on the implementation of national lifelong learning reforms. This article investigates to what extent these supranational policy orientations have been translated into concrete national lifelong learning initiatives. Although European countries were not equally affected in terms of time and intensity by the rise in youth unemployment rates, the political responses from their governments shared a central focus on employability solutions to youth unemployment in lifelong learning policy reforms. Our comparative analysis shows how different lifelong learning policy initiatives managed to ‘educationalise’ a structural economic problem (i.e. youth unemployment) into an individual educational concern (i.e. lack of education and skills). We...

Training Policy for Youth Unemployed in a Sample of European Countries

2002

The aim of this paper is evaluating the impact of training on the employability of young long-term unemployed (18-24) within the EU. The analysis focuses on three countries representing different educational and training systems: Spain and Sweden are examples of a rigid and of a flexible sequential system, respectively; Germany is the best example of a dual educational and training system. Following a new wave in the literature on evaluation of employment policy, the paper attempts a targetoriented approach, as opposed to a programme-oriented approach. The effect of training on the labour market participation of young people is estimated by a multinomial LOGIT model relative to five labour market statuses: unemployment, employment, training, education and inactivity. The impact of the policy is analysed controlling for other important individual determinants, such as human and social capital endowment, the reservation wage and unemployment duration. The estimates provide little evidence in favour of a positive impact of ALMP in Spain and Germany. Only in Sweden the probability to be employed is significantly dependent on participation on training programmes. This result could be also due to the poor targeting of the policy to the weakest groups, especially in Southern European countries. It raises the issue of whether ALMP is a good instrument to fight youth unemployment and suggests a reform of the general education system could be more "effective". JEL Classification: H240, J240, J630, R230

Employment and Education Policy for Young People in the EU: What Can New Member States Learn from Old Member States?

2007

The EU experience with youth unemployment has changed over recent years with the launch and re-launch of the Lisbon Strategy and the Bologna process. A dramatic shift has taken place from the 1990s emphasis on labour market flexibility as a tool to abate youth long term unemployment to the more recent stress on the importance of increasing the human capital endowment via a deep reform of education and training systems. This shift is also taking place worldwide, since, as recent studies show, labour market flexibility can increase employability when the human capital level of young people is sufficiently high. To reduce the "experience gap" between young and adult people, the education systems should become of a higher quality, more inclusive to reduce the dropout rate, homogeneous to other EU countries to favour labour mobility, flexible to allow young people to better find the best match, and contemplate the duality principle, by providing training together with education, to favour smoother school-to-work transitions. Apprenticeships schemes, fiscal incentives to hire the youth unemployed as well as on-the-job training schemes should help reach objectives that cannot be guaranteed simply via an increase in labour market flexibility.

The impact of youth policy measures on the labour market

2017

Our modern society that is based on innovation is ever more quickly developing. Further and further more, one policy measures and actions are not sufficient in ones ability to solve emerging problems and the resulting challenges. Modern solutions require an inter-sectoral approach and coordination of different policy actors and systematic action. The aim of this article is to show the impact of youth policy as a separate policy area on employment policy, specifically in the Lithuanian labor market. The article focuses on the category of 15–29 year-old inactive youth. The article analyzes individual specific measures of youth policy which affect young people’s ability to integrate and reintegrate into the labor market, best practices from different European Union countries are revised too. The article aims to have an inter-sectoral lens in its outlook and methodology. Inter-sectoral interaction should be perceived as the most effective element in its ability to solve labor market pro...

A Note on Youth Unemployment in the EU

VOL. VII, 2007

This short note aims to provide a theoretical framework to think of the youth unemployment problem and a classification of EU countries according to the way they address it. The key factor to explain youth unemployment is what we call the youth experience gap. To help young people to fill their experience gap and smooth school-to-work transitions every country provides a mix of policy instruments, including different degrees and types of labour market flexibility, of educational and training systems, of passive income support schemes and fiscal incentives. Five different country groups are detected whose outcomes in terms of youth unemployment are dramatically different: a) the North-European; b) the Continental European; c) the Anglo-Saxon; d) the South-European; e) new member states. The Lisbon strategy provides well-targeted guidelines, but is costly and hard to implement.

The Employment Status of Youth: Elements of a European Comparison

Review of European research on youth transition to employment revealed some methodological difficulties in making cross-national comparisons of educational attainment and employment status. Ways to fine tune the indicators were identified. (Contains 48 references.) (SK)

Long-Term Unemployed Youth: Characteristics and Policy Responses

2017

While the youth labour market in the European Union (EU) has improved considerably since 2014, one legacy of the recent economic crisis is the large cohort of long-term unemployed young people, which represents nearly one-third of jobless young people. This report from the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound) provides an updated profile of the youth labour market in 2016 and describes trends over the past decade. It explores the determinants of long-term unemployment, at both sociodemographic and macroeconomic levels. It also provides evidence on the serious consequences for young people of spending a protracted time in unemployment, such as scarring effects on income and occupation and on several dimensions of young people's well-being. The report concludes with a discussion of selected policy measures recently implemented by 10 EU member states in order to prevent young people from becoming long-term unemployed or, if they are in...

Improving Youth Unemployment Issues and Further Development of Youth Policies in the European Union member states

Technium Social Sciences Journal, 2022

Young people are the most important part of the country's labour resources and a strategic resource for socioeconomic development. Employment of young people requires special assistance and support. They are distinguished from other socio-demographic groups of the population by their health, level of education, vocational training, mobility, high demands on work, etc. It is necessary to establish mechanisms and set goals through ministries, local governments, youth organizations, the private sector, civil society and international organizations to improve the various problems or challenges facing young people. Solving the employment problems of young people requires a special approach because it is the youth who are the most active part of society, which reacts strongly to social injustice. This chapter will summarize all the issues mentioned in the previous chapter and offer possible solutions for improving the youth unemployment problem.