Since the 1990s, the persistence of high unemployment has been followed by two downturns, which affected an economic life over the world across the nation-states. The overt consequences cost unpleasantly social and economic outcomes for the states as well as societies. Henceforth, activation turn has observed once more shifting passive employment policies within the active policy actions of countries upon labour market at the beginning of a new millennium. It was supposed that the activation of jobless people through keeping employees occupied, job-search assistance, job creation and work experience programs, training and invest in up skilling, is an open way to fight against high unemployment and secure economic growth as well. Hereby, the idea of an active labour market policy (ALMP) became again pivotal tool in the domestic policy agendas of states in order to engage in new challenges of labour markets. Since the 1950s,it is an apparent fact that in Europe and the Nordic countries that the effectiveness of ALMPs engenders diminution in a structural and long-term unemployment and leads to increase net income together with the employment ratio of targeted groups in national economies.
With the XXI century’s new technological vicissitudes and industrialization, the active employment policies have been designed to support people with monetary (income) and non-monetary (education) incentives in order to reduce inequality, keep the balance of social inclusion, and stimulate market beyond to decrease unemployment. Consequently, labour market training grew into to become an important measure of ALMP strategies in the background of “welfare to workfare policy approach” to create better-skilled workforce as well as to surge adequate match between skilled manpower and needs of progressive demand in labour markets.
In fact, the scholarly studies state significant impacts of training and vocational programs in the activation of the workforce. For example, the 1950-1960s – Post War Era characterized with the rapid economic growth and labour supply shortage in the European industry. And as a solution, national employment policies started to focus on labour trainings. So that Sweden with its successful retraining system has been the pioneer of ALMP idea in the history. On the other hand, Germany with 1969`s Employment Promotion Act considered training as a principal component of active employment policies to upskill workforce in terms of new industrial needs by market demand.
The UN 2009 reports that education is considered one of the main indicators of poverty reduction: education and human resource investments contribute to an economic development of nation-states and societies. Higher educated people or up-skilled workforce boost up productivity and react the positively to technological changes. Some scholars and interlocutors claim that in long-term perspectives ALMPs should have to aim to develop an education and training system that enhances the productivity and employability of a labour force. Because of the fact that the skilled manpower is one of the cornerstones of the higher employment, developed economy, higher net income and well-being of the whole society.
Many types of research have been carried out to identify the prominence of labour market training, however, the Katz`s study (1993) shows the significant point of job market training as turning “unskilled labour” into “skilled labour”. Perceptibly, the unemployment problem is more common among less skilled individuals and new entrants to the market. Shifting in demand against unskilled labour force causes an unemployment among those people. In contrast to unskilled force reservation wage and labour demand is high for skilled manpower in the market. Here, the training policy helps turn out unskilled to a skilled workforce and to increase total employment in order to decrease unskilled unemployment. Research argues that training policy extends the skilled labour force and close the gap between the unskilled and skilled workers. Caruana and Theuma (2012) refer to Katz (1993) argue that in order to push jobless people towards work, some trainings improve the qualification of those workers who are already in the market. Hence, Katz (1993) emphasizes the importance of labour market training in reducing the unemployment rate of unskilled labour by transferring more workers to the skilled labour pool. They also underline the significant role of a training policy in improving the skills of employees and increasing, the supply of skilled manpower in the economy. The following figure “Development of Unskilled Labour Force” visualizes Katz`s statement andshows how training measure affects the job market in both ways. The points where demand curves intersect supply curves, which are given wages for skilled and unskilled labour respectively. As the author explains, the wages represent the remuneration of foregone opportunity costs that, logically, is higher for skilled labour than for unskilled one. Since labour demand for the skilled labour is stronger than that of unskilled labour, thus, the demand curve for the former one is more elastic. As the figure illustrates, after the implementation of training, part of unskilled labour is moving up to the skilled.
At the same time, scholar states that wage setting regulation, training, and education systems affect differently net income and employment perspectives. Consequently, education and labour training policies create an equal distribution of skills and able to reduce supply and demand shifting on wages and employment. Another study by Calmfors et al., (2001) argue that training programs increase the reservation wage of attendees. However, salary growth and employment perspectives are possible by time after long run participation in the program.
To sum up, the training policy is considered as a main supply-side policy tool of activation to tackle unemployment. Scholars argue that training programs are useful to prevent the long run unemployment and to keep unemployed active in the market via participation. However, ex-post evaluation of training programs is controversial. Country case studies show that training programs are more effective in the background of vocational education reforms and collaboration with demand-side active labour market policies.
Reference list:
- , Forslund A., &Hemstrom M., (2001), Does Active Labour Market Policy Work? Lessons from Swedish experiences, Swedish Economy Policy Review, 85, 61-124
- Caruana C. &Theuma M., (2012), The next leap – From Labour Market Programmes to Active Labour Market Policy.
- Katz, F.L., (1993), Active Labor Market Policies to Expand Employment and Opportunity.
- United Nations, (2009), Rethinking Poverty: Report on the World Social Situation 2010, Retrieved from http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/rwss/docs/2010/fullreport.pdf
