Youth Unemployment and Active Labor Market Policies in Europe

Spain: Selected Issues

“…Strengthening the capacity of PES and addressing regional heterogeneity are needed to provide more individualized and timely support to jobseekers. Caliendo and Schmidl (2016) find that job search assistance is the only ALMP that has unambiguously positive effects on employment outcomes in Europe; the other ALMPs have mixed or even negative effects. This calls for strengthening the PES and improving employment services.…”

The Dynamics of Marginalized Youth

“…1 Job-search assistance: Measures aimed at helping job search have been found to be as effective as more expensive programmes such as job creation and job subsidies (OECD, 1993). More recently, research has suggested that job-search assistance and monitoring programmes have positive effects on employment take-up, are cost-effective and work in different settings (Caliendo and Schmidl, 2016). They can also act as an early intervention strategy to reduce such risk.…”

“…Crucially, being underpinned by effective and efficient profiling and follow-up systems was found to be pivotal to their success. Shortcomings of ALMPs, which have been voiced in relation to their impact on young people, include the propensity, particularly for training and subsidized employment programmes, to demonstrate large deadweight, substitution, and displacement effects; their tendency to focus on 'work ready' young people, at the expense of 'harder to help' and 'harder to reach' groups; and a lack of evidence about 'what works and at what cost', notably a 'shortsighted' emphasis on measuring job outcomes, rather than on the 'distance travelled' by individuals and the impact which training and/or work experience may have on their attachment to the labour market (Caliendo and Schmidl, 2016). Also, the costs of programmes are often vague, inconsistent, and incomplete.…”

Social Exclusion of Youth in Europe

“…Previous research has revealed that this cross-country variation can be related to differences in the structural, institutional, and cultural contexts across Europe. In this respect, policies come into play that modify contexts in such a way that they improve youth labour market chances (Lahusen et al, 2013;Caliendo and Schmidl, 2016;Hora et al, 2019).…”