Towards a set of composite indicators on Flexicurity: The Composite indicator on Active Labour Market Policies

Abstract This paper presents a composite indicator to measure Effective Active Labour Market Policies (ALMP) using 16 indicators based on the Eurostat¿s Labour Market Policies DataBase. Alongside the composite index on Life Long Learning (LLL) previously elaborated, the present index has been developed within the joint DG EMPL/DG JRC project aimed to measure Flexicurity in the EU through a set of four composite indicators corresponding to the four main pillars of flexicurity as identified in the 2006 Commission Communication on this topic (COM(2007) 359). The ALMPs index is computed following the methodology developed in the OECD/JRC handbook on composite indicators. The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 lists the indicators and presents their characteristics and problems. Section 3 presents the methodology adopted for computation of a composite indicator. Section 4 shows the results. Section 5 carries out uncertainty analysis of their robustness. Finally, section 6 presents results on a country-by-country basis.JRC.G.9-Econometrics and applied statistic

Long-Term Unemployed Youth: Characteristics and Policy Responses

While the youth labour market has improved considerably since 2014, one legacy of the recent economic crisis is the large cohort of long-term unemployed young people, which represents nearly one-third of jobless young people. This report provides an updated profile of the youth labour market in 2016 and describes trends over the past decade. It explores the determinants of long-term unemployment, at both sociodemographic and macroeconomic levels. It also provides evidence on the serious consequences for young people of spending a protracted time in unemployment, such as scarring effects on income and occupation and on several dimensions of young people’s well-being. The report concludes with a discussion of selected policy measures recently implemented by 10 Member States in order to prevent young people from becoming long-term unemployed or, if they are in such circumstances, to integrate them into the labour market or education

Retrieving expert opinion on weights for the Active Citizenship Composite Indicator

On February 2007, a detailed survey was conducted with 27 leading experts on Active Citizenship to obtain individual qualitative and quantitative estimates about the importance of the dimensions encompassed in the Active Citizenship Composite Indicators, Hoskins et al. 2006. The questionnaire was designed following the Budget Allocation Scheme and the results of the survey reported here were helpful in computing new weights, as the basis of a new version of the Active Citizenship Composite Indicator based on the elicitation of the expert knowledge. Moreover, results display a much richer diversity of opinion than is apparent in qualitative consensus summaries, such as those of the Active Citizenship Research Network. The new version of the Active Citizenship Composite Indicator provide a new ranking of countries that is not far from the original, confirming the robustness of the ACCI proved in Hoskins et al. 2006.JRC.DG.G.9-Econometrics and applied statistic

Towards a set of composite indicators on Flexicurity - The dimension of Lifelong Learning

A composite indicator on Lifelong Learning is developed. This represents the first step of a project that aims to cover the four main dimensions of flexicurity : i) modern labour laws; ii) effective active labour market policies; iii) modern social security systems; and iv) comprehensive lifelong learning policies. A composite indicator is calculated for EU Member States followed by sensitivity analysis to check their robustness. Results suggest a high degree of heterogeneity across EuropeJRC.G.9-Econometrics and statistical support to antifrau

The Characteristics of Social Participation in Europe: Evidence from ESS2002

This report investigates the characteristics of social involvement in Europe by tracing and identikit of the shares of individuals that are more likely to be involved with different kinds of formal organizations and showing how each of these groups perceives the political, economical, and relational spheres of social reality. The analysis covers 19 European countries and is based on indicators for which the data has been principally drawn from the European Social Survey of 2002. The results indicate an heterogeneous Europe in which Nordic and Continental countries are adequately representing by the existing indicators, which determine the representation of reality that we are using. Mediterranean and Eastern countries, on the other side, appear follow different participatory schemes. Thus, alternative variables, such as informal participation, must be collected and analyzed to inform policies that can effectively support the different forms of interactions (both formal and informal) between State and Society. Moreover, education has a consistently positive effect for all kinds of participation in all the countries under analysis. Such result advocates for looking at education as one of the possibly most transversal policy actions to undertake and suggests the importance of working on the quality of education systems both at basic and higher level.JRC.G.9-Econometrics and statistical support to antifrau

The characterization of Active Citizenship in Europe

Facilitating Active citizenship is one of the European Commission's strategies for increasing social cohesion and reducing the democratic deficit across Europe within the context of the wider Lisbon process. In this context, this report provides an evidence base for policy development, identifying the socio-demographic characteristics and determinants of active citizens and those who for one reason or another participate much less. The report provides a detailed identikit of the active citizen from 2002 across 14 European countries Austrian, Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Spain, Finland, United Kingdom, Greece, Italy, Luxemburg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden (the complete dataset available for this research is only available for the majority of old member states of the European Union and European Economic Area).JRC.G.9-Econometrics and applied statistic

Why are managers happier than workers?

This paper studies the determinants of differences in self reported job satisfaction across occupations using data from the 2006/2007 European Social Survey (18 countries). When the effect of other variables is not accounted for, being a Manager yields a "satisfaction bonus" two times as big as the one provided by Workers positions. This substantial satisfaction gap between those holding Managerial positions and Workers practically disappears when we control for individual, household and work related variables. Even though the differences across occupations are reduced, all occupations bring about more job satisfaction than manual and service positions. All results hold when using the European Working Conditions Survey data set. In addition, the results are robust to the use of job satisfaction as a categorical variable and to a variation of the model specification that takes into account the potential endogeneity of the occupational choice.JRC.DG.G.9-Econometrics and applied statistic

Fourth European Community Innovation Survey: Strengths and Weaknesses of European Countries

This report provides detailed profiles for the EU and some EFTA countries as regards to innovation. The data for analysis are obtained from the recent European Community Innovation Survey, whose results have been released in December 2006. This has been the fourth Community Innovation Survey ( CIS hereby on ) so far, one of the two main instruments together with the European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS) to gather data on innovation indicators and assess national innovation performance. The CIS is designed to obtain information on innovation activities within enterprises, as well as various aspects of the process such as the effects of innovation, sources of information used, costs etc. The CIS-4 survey has been realized in around 30 European countries plus some non-European countries. The structure of the report is as follows: depending on the data availability, for each country a three step analysis is provided: the first part summarizes the general profile of the country on innovation, then the second part focuses on the economic sectors and firm sizes within each country, finaly a graphical representation of the general profile of the country is given.JRC.G.9-Econometrics and statistical support to antifrau

Towards a set of Composite Indicators on Flexicurity: a Comprehensive Approach

The European Commission¿s Lisbon Agenda aims to enhance both flexibility and security in the labour markets in order to reconcile competitiveness and sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion (COM(2007)359). The pursuit of a balance between flexibility and security addresses simultaneously -the flexibility of labour markets, work organization and labour relations, and -security, including employment and social security for weaker groups in and out of the labour market. This is the concept of flexicurity whereby flexibilisation of employment and labour markets is advocated to support productivity, competitiveness and growth, while security is advocated from a social policy perspective emphasising the importance of preserving social cohesion within society (Wilthagen, 1998). The approach of flexicurity implies that the policies for more and better jobs are developed in coordination with social partners from both sides, i.e. employees and employers, through public or private partnership and are aimed to ensure security to workers in and out of the labour market reducing risks of social exclusion (Wilthagen and Tros, 2004). Moreover, flexicurity also concerns progress of workers into better jobs, development of talent and support of transitions during life course, e.g. from school to work, from job to job, between unemployment and employment and from work to retirement. Therefore, security implies equipping people with the skills that enable them to progress in their working lives, and helping them find a new job rapidly when unemployed. It is also about adequate unemployment benefits to facilitate transitions towards new jobs. Finally, it encompasses training opportunities for all workers, especially weaker groups such as the low skilled and older workers. This paper has been developed in this framework and presents the findings of a research project carried out by the Joint Research Centre- (Unit G09-Econometrics and Applied Statistics) and DG Employment (Unit D1 ¿ Employment Analysis) of the European Commission . The project aimed to develop statistical tools to measure flexicurity achievements of EU Member States through a set of four composite indicators corresponding to the four dimensions of flexicurity identified by the Commission (COM(2007)359) ¿Lifelong Learning (LLL), ¿Active Labour Market Policies (ALMP), ¿Modern Social Security Systems (MSS) and ¿Flexible and Reliable Contractual Arrangements (FCA). This project represents a significant step forward with respect to previous analyses of flexicurity, in many respects: Comprehensiveness, Soundness and transparency of statistical methodology used, Solid theoretical framework on flexicurity, Policy relevance: possibility to replicate the exercise for policy monitoring, Robustness of results is extensively assessedJRC.DG.G.9-Econometrics and applied statistic

Towards a set of composite indicators on Flexicurity: the Indicator on Flexible and Reliable Contractual Arrangement

As a fourth and last step in the process of construction of a set of composite indicators on flexicurity within a joint DG EMPL-JRC project, this paper presents a composite indicator on Flexible and Reliable Contractual Arrangements (FCA), i.e. one of the four dimensions of flexicurity identified by the Commission (see COM(2007) 359). The indicator is based on 19 basic indicators and three sub-dimensions, i.e. i) Regulations on dismissals and use of flexible contractual forms - external flexibility; ii) Flexibility of working time - internal flexibility; iii) Flexibility of work organisation to help combine work and family responsibilities ¿ work-life balance combination flexibility. The indicator covers a four years period (2005 to 2008). The large set of indicators included, going well beyond the strictness of employment protection legislation whereby labour market flexibility is often measured, makes this exercise broader and more comprehensive than any previous attempt to characterise the flexibility dimension within a holistic attempt to measure flexicurity. All indicators used are based on institutional EU-level data sources. Results point to considerable heterogeneity in FCA across the EU, although Member States are not always grouped across well defined geographical clusters often mentioned in relevant literature (e.g. Southern, Anglo-Saxon etc.). The indicator's country ranking is quite stable over time, in particular in the years 2006-2008, while significant differences can be observed between 2005, on the one hand, and 2006-2008, on the other hand. Uncertainty and sensitivity analyses have been performed in order to test the robustness of the Composite Indicator. Those were based on 12000 different simulated scenarios, generated by considering different options with respect to standardization methods, weighting scheme, aggregation rules and the inclusion/exclusion of basic indicators. Results show that the composite indicator's scores and rankings are overall robust, albeit with some variability mainly due to imputation of missing data and low correlation among basic indicators. On average, ranking variability is higher than in the Life Long Learning and Modern Social Security composite indicators, but lower than in the Active Labour Market Policies one, reflecting the varying presence of missing data.JRC.DG.G.9-Econometrics and applied statistic