High and persistent unemployment is a key policy issue in many OECD countries, particularly in Europe. Many initiatives … countries have had with implementing policies to reduce unemployment. As a background to this, it first presents a brief review … of unemployment and wage developments as well as an overview of the OECD Jobs Strategy. …

This paper deals with trends and cycles of unemployment and labour-force participation. Empirical evidence on both … trends and cyclical movements in unemployment and participation is presented. Some of the mechanisms behind the observed … assessment of labour market slack of the observed interplay between unemployment and participation are discussed. The paper ends …