There have been concerns that employment-enhancing reforms along the lines of the 1994 OECD Jobs Strategy could inadvertently lead to increased income inequality and poverty. This paper focuses on the impact of institutions and redistributive policies on inequality and poverty with the view of...

Many OECD countries have in recent decades experienced periods of relatively rapid growth in nonemployment benefit expenditures and recipiency rates which have not subsequently been reversed. By contrast, in a number of OECD countries the number of unemployment benefit recipients has declined...

Maintaining high participation and employment in the face of the recent recession and a rapidly ageing population are major challenges for policy makers in Finland. The recession of the early 1990s showed that high unemployment can leave long–lasting scars on labour markets, while rapid ageing...

Luxembourg’s unemployment rate - which was extremely low in the 1970s and 1980s, and in the 1990s increased considerably but still remained low compared with other countries - has since 2004 been close to 5%. This report first compares Luxembourg’s experience with that of "reference...

Most Western countries have a long tradition of employment service provision by public bodies and non-profit organisations, but not by for-profit organisations. The creation of a quasi-market arrangement is not a simple choice for government. This paper underscores the difficulties and discusses...

The global recession is likely to results in higher structural unemployment for some time in many OECD countries. This paper assesses how the shock to aggregate unemployment as a result of the economic crisis may be transmitted to structural unemployment through hysteresis effects that occur...

The current situation of the labour market integration of migrants in Germany has to be viewed in the light of its immigration history. During the post-war economic boom, until 1973, Germany focused on the recruitment of low-skilled foreign labour. Many of these “guestworker” immigrants...

Until recently, an unemployed person in Sweden who participated in an active labour market programme earned entitlement to a further 60 weeks of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits. A "carousel" effect - cycling between periods of open unemployment and participation in active programmes -...

This article seeks to explain the contradiction between the promises of welfare gains derived from the economic models recommending the removal of immigration restrictions and the realities experienced by countries attempting to apply restrictions to immigration flows. A formal model is built in...

Work impairment is an increasing concern in advanced economies, particularly among young people. Activation, rather than passively providing economic support, is often regarded as the preferred strategy for addressing this issue. However, little is known about which measures are effective for...