Youth unemployment and active labor market policies in Europe

Since the economic crisis in 2008, European youth unemployment rates have been persistently high at around 20% on average. The majority of European countries spends significant resources each year on active labor market programs (ALMP) with the aim of improving the integration prospects of struggling youths. Among the most common programs used are training courses, job search assistance and monitoring, subsidized employment, and public work programs. For policy makers, it is of upmost importance to know which of these programs work and which are able to achieve the intended goals – may it be the integration into the first labor market or further education. Based on a detailed assessment of the particularities of the youth labor market situation, we discuss the pros and cons of different ALMP types. We then provide a comprehensive survey of the recent evidence on the effectiveness of these ALMP for youth in Europe, highlighting factors that seem to promote or impede their effectiveness in practice. Overall, the findings with respect to employment outcomes are only partly promising. While job search assistance (with and without monitoring) results in overwhelmingly positive effects, we find more mixed effects for training and wage subsidies, whereas the effects for public work programs are clearly negative. The evidence on the impact of ALMP on furthering education participation as well as employment quality is scarce, requiring additional research and allowing only limited conclusions so far

Changes in England and Wales dairy farming since 1996/97 A re-survey

Final report to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and FoodSIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:m00/34007 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Transitions In and Out of Unemployment among Young People in the Irish Recession

Young people have been hit hard by unemployment during the Irish recession. While much research has been undertaken to study the effects of the recession on overall labour market dynamics, little is known about the specific effects on youth unemployment and the associated challenges. This paper attempts to fill this gap by comparing the profile of transitions to work before the recession (2006) and as the economy emerged from the recession (2011). The results indicate that the rate of transition of the youth from unemployment to employment fell dramatically. The fall is not due to changes in the composition or the characteristics of the unemployed group but to changes in the external environment. These changes imply that the impact of certain individual characteristics changed over the course of the recession. In particular, for youth, education and nationality have become more important for finding a job in Ireland

Geriatrician involvement in community-based psychogeriatric service

Aim. To evaluate the effectiveness of geriatric assessment and interventions in a psychogeriatric community service and to assess the prevalence of delirium in patients referred to this service. Methods. 16 female and 14 male psychogeriatric patients aged 65 to 97 (mean, 81.1) years were referred to a tertiary hospital in southwestern Sydney, Australia and assessed by the psychogeriatric team and a geriatric registrar. Data collected included patient characteristics and demographics, referral source, reasons for referral, medications, medical comorbidities, and clinical assessments made by the geriatric registrar. Differences between patients deemed to require interventions and those who did not were compared. Results. After assessment by the geriatric registrar, 10 of the patients were considered to require further medical interventions. Two of them were hospitalised for delirium; 2 were treated for osteoporosis owing to minimal trauma fractures, and 6 needed medication adjustments. Hypertension was more common in those not deemed to require an intervention (85% vs. 30%, p=0.005), whereas seizures were more common in those deemed to require an intervention (30% vs. 0%, p=0.03). Conclusion. Psychogeriatric patients may benefit from medical input by a geriatric registrar in terms of evaluating and managing complex medical issues and proceeding to a medical intervention

Working conditions in hydrogen production: A social life cycle assessment

Social impacts of novel technology can, parallel to environmental and economic consequences, influence its sustainability. By analyzing the case of hydrogen production by advanced alkaline water electrolysis (AEL) from a life cycle perspective, this paper illustrates the social implications of the manufacturing of the electrolyzer and hydrogen production when installed in Germany, Austria, and Spain. This paper complements previous environmental and economic assessments, which selected this set of countries based on their different structures in electricity production. The paper uses a mixed method design to analyze the social impact for the workers along the process chain. Appropriate indicators related to working conditions are selected on the basis of the UN Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. The focus on workers is chosen as a first example to test the relatively new Product Social Impact LifeCycle Assessment (PSILCA) database version 2.0. The results of the quantitative assessment are then complemented and compared through an investigation of the underlying raw data and a qualitative literature analysis. Overall, advancedAEL is found to have least social impact along the German process chain, followed by the Spanish and the Austrian. All three process chains show impacts on global upstream processes. In order to reduce social impact and ultimately contribute to Sustainable Development, policymakers and industry need to work together to further improve certain aspects of working conditions in different locations, particularly within global upstream processes