Adapting employment policies to post-industrial labour market risks

Labour market risk structures have changed quite dramatically since the early postwar years. Long-term unemployment, low wage employment and the associated problem of the working poor, and clashes between work and family life constitute today the most widespread social risks. They were not well covered by the welfare states that were built during the postwar years. Today, however, some welfare states, in the Nordic countries, seem much more effective in dealing with these new risks. In this paper it is argued that this is a result of different policy decisions taken in response to deindustrialisation and the loss of manufacturing employment since the 1970s.