Levelling the playing field? Active labour market policies, educational attainment and unemployment

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate how active labour market policy (ALMP) training programmes and hiring subsidies increase or decrease differences in the unemployment risk between lesser and higher educated people during an economic downturn. A focus is put on potential job competition dynamics and cumulative (dis)advantages of the lesser and higher educated. Design/methodology/approach The paper uses multi-level data. The fifth wave (2010) of the European Social Survey was used and combined with macro-level data on labour market policies of the OECD. The sample consisted of 18,172 observations in 19 countries. Findings The results show that higher levels of participation and spending on training policies are related to a smaller difference in the unemployment risks of the educational groups. Higher training policy intensity is associated with a lower unemployment risk for the lesser educated and a higher unemployment risk for the higher educated. This implies that the lesser educated are better able to withstand downward pressure from the higher educated, thereby, reducing downward displacement during an economic downturn. Hiring subsidies do not seem to be associated with the impact of education on unemployment. Originality/value The paper adds to the discussion on ALMP training and hiring subsidies that are primarily rooted in the human capital theory and signalling theory. Both theories ignore the social context of labour market behaviour. The job competition theory and cumulative (dis)advantage theory add to these theories by focussing on the relative position of individuals and the characteristics that accompany the social position of the individual.

Transformational leadership and human resource development: Linking employee learning, job satisfaction, and organizational performance

“…Primarily centered on learning and performance, organizational HRD culture aims to support organizational processes to nurture human expertise in the workplace. Such distinction reveals itself in the HRD literature where most of the previous studies have generally focused on the performance aspect of HRD, such as employee engagement (Davis & Van der Heijden, 2018; Lee & Eissenstat, 2018) and training effectiveness (Flatt & Jacobs, 2018; Kim et al, 2015), or general learning aspects of HRD, such as transfer of training (Govaerts, Kyndt, Vreye, & Dochy, 2017; Johnson, Blackman, & Buick, 2018) and training costs (Benda, Koster, & Romke, 2019; Islam, 2019; Nguyen & Truong, 2011). However, such foci may be limiting as they either emphasize distinct implications for critical organizational outcomes or contributions.…”

Risk-oriented approach to managing the social market economy

“…Literature review Preconditions and perspectives of creation of the social market economy and the accumulated practical experience are discussed in the works of Agunovich et al (2018), Andronova andRiazantsev (2006), D'Aleo and, Goyal and Sergi (2015a), Goyal and Sergi (2015b), Goyal et al (2015), Goyal et al (2017), Haabazoka et al (2019), Ivanov et al (2019), Pichkov (2016), Popkova and French (2017), Popkova and Sergi (2020), , , Popkova et al (2018), Popkova and Zmiyak (2019), Pritvorova et al (2018), Qerimi and Sergi (2015), Ragulina (2019), Sergi et al (2019), Shevyakova and Petrenko (2018), Shevyakova et al (2019) and Zavyalova et al (2018). Risk management and related crisis management of market economy ("pure" market) are described in the works of Adetiloye et al (2017), Amin (2019), Apergis (2015), Balima et al (2017), Benda et al (2019), Bertolini and Goglio (2019), Boonman (2019), Bouri (2015), Br€ ulle et al (2019), Deb et al (2020), Demiralay (2019), Floyd (2019), Gencer and Demiralay (2016), Ha-Huy et al (2016), Jiang et al (2017), Kourachanis (2019), Laitsou et al (2017), Matsuoka (2018), Mul e (2019), Naess and B ardsen (2015), ...…”

Attitude of youth towards self-employment: Evidence from university students in Yemen

“…Countries with high unemployment rates where economic systems search for alternative methods to provide employment usually have economic institutions with focused policies to facilitate selfemployment in the general population, especially for university graduates [4][5][6]. Today, the unemployment rate among the highly-educated population is proportionally more than the less-educated population [4,7]. Therefore, providing job opportunities for all graduate students is a crucial issue of relevant authorities in various contexts.…”