The paper starts by presenting some stylised facts on youth unemployment over the last two decades, both at the euro area and the country level. It shows that despite declining considerably over the last few years, youth unemployment has remained at a high level relative to other age groups in...

The strength of the German labour market response to the financial crisis of 2008-09 demonstrated the benefits of past labour market reforms, which raised work incentives, improved job matching and increased working hour flexibility. Going forward, the government should build on this success and...

The global crisis led to a smaller increase in the unemployment rate than in most other OECD countries as employment has been sustained through intensive use of reduced working time schemes. These schemes have mostly benefited workers with permanent contracts while the higher unemployment mostly...

Finland’s population is set to age rapidly in the coming decades. This will put pressure on public finances, while shrinking labour resources. Nonetheless, solutions exist to alleviate those pressures. Adjusting the pension age in line with the rise in life expectancy would reduce pension...

The issues of the forced migration and integration of refugees in the EU society and labour markets are high on the policy agenda. Apart from humanitarian aspects, a sustainable integration of accepted refugees is important also for social, economic, budgetary and other reasons. Although, the...

Although, the need for an efficient Roma integration policy is growing in Europe, surprisingly little robust scientific evidence regarding potential policy costs and expected benefits of alternative policy options has supported the policy design and implementation so far. The present study...

This paper provides a first assessment of the fiscal and distributional consequences of the ongoing structural changes in the labour markets of EU Member States, mostly driven by technological progress and ageing. Cedefop 2020 Skill forecasts, EUROSTAT population projections and the forecast on...

Does employment flexibility facilitate cross-regional adjustments via labour mobility? Or is it instead a hinderance to cross-regional equilibration in the labour market? We examine this, drawing on a sample of 11 European countries belonging to different 'varieties' of European capitalism. We...

In the past 30 years Costa Rica has grown steadily and social indicators have improved markedly. Well-being indicators are comparable or even above the OECD average in several dimensions, such as health, environment or life-satisfaction. This paper reviews the social progress that Costa Rica has...