Prolonged labour shortages in the EU affect growth, innovation and the bloc’s ability to achieve its digital and green targets, as around 80% of EU employers struggle to recruit workers with the right skills. Currently, the skills of one in three employees in the EU are mismatched with their job, with 17% overqualified and 13% underqualified.
Short-time work or similar measures were implemented in all EU Member States during 2020 and contributed greatly to limiting the rise in unemployment that resulted from the COVID-19 pandemic. However, further success was hampered by varying levels of income protection between countries, as well as limitations in coverage.
There were 5.7 million fewer people in employment in the EU by spring 2020 than at the end of 2019, and 6.3 million fewer compared with the trend growth that could have been expected before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Large scale restructuring involving job loss is usually well-documented, and there is rightly a focus on what options there are for those who have lost their jobs. But what impact does all this have on those that are left behind?
Over the last decade, European labour markets have seen a surge in the number of older workers in work and a continuous decline in their unemployment rates. A lot of young and middle-aged workers lost their jobs in the Great Recession, but not so the older age group. This means they receive less policy attention, which is unfortunate for older workers who suddenly find themselves without a job.
This graph, taken from the latest European Restructuring Monitor (ERM) report, shows the announced job losses and gains since 2008.
Restructuring is a common feature of labour markets and work organisation. While much research in this area primarily concentrates on the implications for those that lose their jobs, the latest report on restructuring from Eurofound focuses on the impacts for those that remain in an organisation.
2017 was a good year for the majority of EU Member States in terms of recovery of employment. However, while the EU28 as a whole is now exceeding its pre-crisis employment rate, in 2017 it was still 2.8 percentage points short of its 2020 target of an overall employment rate of 75%. In addition, several Member States' employment rates continue to lag behind those witnessed a decade ago.
** Listen to Eurofound Research Officer Sara Riso introduce the Start-up support for young people publication here.**
The new Eurofound report ‘Start-up support for young people: From implementation to evaluation’ maps the variety of publicly supported interventions on youth entrepreneurship and reviews a range of policy evaluations assessing their impact and effectiveness.
What beco
(Dublin, Ireland): Many start-up support schemes for young people have limited resources, are isolated from broader youth employment policies, and are not assessed from a long-term perspective. Understanding what elements of start-up support work and how interventions can be improved is essential if youth entrepreneurship policies are to be effective for young people. This is according to Eurofou
Eurofound (European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions) is a tripartite EU body, whose mission is to provide knowledge to assist in the development of better social, employment and work-related policies.
