What works and for whom: a review of OECD countries' experiences with active labour market policies

John Martin (seanomartin@gmail.com) and David Grubb

No 2001:14, Working Paper Series from IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy

Abstract: Although rather discouraging in general, the evaluation literature indicates some measures that have been successful. Job-search assistance, wage subsidies in the private sector, and labour market training do work for some groups, even if the impacts are not large. Also, the evaluation literature focuses on the impacts of one-off programs. Regular interventions, such as job-search monitoring, intensive interviews, and referrals to vacant jobs, have rarely been evaluated rigorously. Recently, introduced "activation" strategies in some OECD countries do appear to yield significant employment gains for participants. An important element in such strategies is experiments with alternative ways of improving the performance of the public employment service.

Activation policies which combine high-quality assistance to find work with pressure on unemployed people to accept job offers can be effective with respect to unemployment duration, but more rapid returns to work sometimes comes at the cost of accepting lower re-employment earnings.

Although active policies might give rise to displacement effects in the short run, this need not be case the over the medium run of a few years. Declines in structural employment rates achieved by many OECD countries in the 1990s give some reasons for optimism in this respect.

Keywords: job search; wage subsidies; labour market training (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J38 J64 J68 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 53 pages
Date: 2001-09-25
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ltv and nep-mic
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (401)

Published in Swedish Economic Policy Review, 2001, pages 9-56.

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