Marginalization on the labour market: the case of long-term unemployment

The paper is focused on problems of long-term unemployment, which strongly affect especially European labour markets. Existing differences in the long-term unemployment during the entire period under consideration 1993–2009 are caused by institutional and structural differences of labour markets in particular member countries of the European Union. The high proportion of the long-term unemployment has its significant economic and social consequences. If the situation of long-term unemployed persons remains unsolved, there is a threat of a substantial material and non-material deprivation within this populous group and a threat of the rise of irreversible damages for the entire population. An economic turnaround itself cannot automatically lead to a decrease in the proportion of long-term unemployment. Even though many EU countries succeeded to decrease unemployment in the period preceding current world recession they didn't succeed to decrease the long-term part of unemployment. Thus, the aim of this paper it not only to analyse the development of the long-term unemployment but also to identify potential groups endangered by marginalization and especially to find its causes and to propose possible solutions of this problem. The paper also calls attention to different concepts of social systems, e.g. in Belgium and Denmark. Preventive measures against long-term unemployment stress most frequently the importance of unemployment benefits but also the strongly de-motivating setting the social benefits (especially for low-wage categories) has to be taken into consideration as well as other related factors.