Active State Labour Policy Measures
-
Praxis Center for Policy Studies, program director
In summary, we can say that employment programs vary greatly from country to country. Studies show that a program that is effective in a certain group in one country will not necessarily work in another. Thus it is important to gauge the influence of a state-run labor program on a regular basis and adapt it according to needs.
The US and Canada have become adept at measuring the effectiveness of their labor programs, and it has also become standard practice in many European countries in the 1990s. The experience of different countries shows that
- the most productive and least expensive kind of labor programs are job search and consulting programs. This approach may not be as effective for youth and the chronically unemployed;
- the most productive training programs are small-scale and well-targeted programs that consider the needs of the participants, employer as well as the job market and part of whose curriculum covers workplace practice. It is most productive to train women and least productive to train young people;
- injections of starter capital only bear results in the case of a small part of the unemployed population – middle-aged men with a higher educational level;
- subsidizing private employers is a relatively ineffective policy, but can be very successful coupled with other programs and in the case of certain risk groups (long-term unemployed, the under-25);
- public works are also a relatively ineffective way to go, but can bear themselves out in motivating the chronically unemployed and instilling beneficial patterns of employment. Public works have been used in developing nations to alleviate poverty;
- the role of the state labor departments is central to offering and implementing labor programs, so it is important to make sure the system has enough resources to offer quality service.