The quest for sustainable employment: Challenges faced by young people during the job‐search process

Young people who are unable to find and sustain employment are at risk for long‐term social and economic exclusion. Active labour market policies (ALMPs) addressing the problem of youth unemployment have focused on building the employability skills of young job seekers to expand their employment opportunities. Yet research exploring how young people navigate the job‐search process is limited. Drawing on interviews with young Australian job seekers and their employment consultants, this article addresses the questions of how young people navigate entry into employment through the job‐search process and what challenges they face. The study revealed three common frustrations experienced by the young people during their job‐search: employers' expectations of relevant work experience in the young person's preferred occupation, being required to apply for jobs not aligned with their career aspirations, and the impact of personal factors on their ability to confidently present themselves to prospective employers. The findings highlight the need for ALMPs and employers to facilitate positive employability support mechanisms that will build a stable platform from which young people can build a trajectory towards sustainable employment to reduce long‐term youth unemployment.     

You can go your own way! The long‐term effectiveness of a self‐employment programme for welfare recipients in Germany

In this study, we examined the long‐term effects of supporting welfare recipients by means of a subsidy to start their own business. We used administrative data and propensity score matching to estimate the impact of the subsidy on the probability of receiving welfare benefits and on unemployment status up to 72 months after programme start. We supplemented our estimation results with the results of a qualitative survey which provided insights into the diversity of entrepreneurial activities and the recipients' motivation for starting a business. Our results are encouraging. We found a stable positive effect on the outcomes of interest. We further found that foreign nationals and the long‐term unemployed benefit the most. We conclude that the subsidy allows some people to successfully start a business who would not have otherwise done so and who would have been less successful by choosing the alternative of continued job search.     

Employer‐oriented labour market policies in Sweden: Creating jobs and the division of labour in the public sector

In many European countries, greater importance is accorded to labour market policies in which employers are involved in activating unemployed people. Such employer‐oriented policies target employers’ demand for labour and attempt to influence their willingness to hire, train or guide (often disadvantaged) unemployed groups. Using data from a qualitative interview study of an employer‐oriented programme in a medium‐size city in Sweden, the present article aims to develop knowledge about how these policies are used to influence employers to hire unemployed workers and how jobs created in this context differ from regular jobs. The article argues that creating jobs through new arrangements for the division of labour, with the promise of relieving regular staff of unskilled tasks, may influence employers’ willingness to hire the unemployed when used alongside other kinds of policy instruments. However, the article also shows that this new division of labour, with programme participants performing mainly unskilled tasks, has been difficult to realize, as new staff gradually come to perform an increasing number of regular working tasks.     

Does Active Labour Market Policy have an Impact on Social Marginalization?

Countless evaluations of active labour market policy (ALMP) have been conducted in the last decade. The common denominator for most of these evaluations is a focus on employment (self‐sufficiency) as the dependent variable, where the success of ALMP is measured in terms of the number of unemployed finding ordinary employment after (or immediately before) participating in an activation programme. The main argument in this article is that this focus is inadequate. For many long‐term unemployed people, it would be an understatement to describe the road to employment as merely ‘bumpy’. Research must take this into consideration. This article therefore deals with the Danish activation policy from a new perspective by analyzing the impact on different aspects of social marginalization, focusing on long‐term social assistance recipients. Using data from a comprehensive, representative quantitative survey of Danish unemployed conducted in 2007, the first analysis convincingly reveals that we fail to find any systematic correlation between participation in ALMP and any of the social marginalization indicators. The second analysis presents a more mixed picture of the participant's own assessment of the impact of ALMP on their self‐esteem; some are quite positive, while others are more neutral or even rather negative. Taking the existing research into account, these results leave us with conceptual and methodological questions for further research.     

Feeling motivated yet? Long‐term unemployed people's perspectives on the implementation of workfare in Australia

A key thrust of labour market policy in Australia and many other western countries is that long‐term unemployed people lack the personal motivation to engage proactively and successfully in the search for paid employment. In this paper we argue that the implementation of what are experienced as paternal workfare programs are counter‐productive to achieving the official policy goal of improving self‐efficacy and gaining paid employment. The empirical discussion presented in the paper is based on a semi‐longitudinal study that tracked 75 long‐term unemployed people in three different labour markets in Australia between 2005–2007. The study was funded by the Australian Research Council and Jobs Australia.     

Work Activation Regimes and Well‐being of Unemployed People: Rhetoric,Risk and Reality of Quasi‐Marketization in the UK Work Programme

Well‐being and employment activation have become central and intertwined policy priorities across advanced economies, with the mandation of unemployed claimants towards employability interventions (e.g. curriculum vitae preparation and interview skills). Compelled job search and job transitions are in part justified by the well‐being gains that resulting employment is said to deliver. However, this dominant focus within the activation field on outcome well‐being – the well‐being improvement triggered by a transition to paid work – neglects how participation in activation schemes can itself affect well‐being levels for unemployed people – what we term ‘process well‐being’ effects. Combining theoretical literature with empirical work on the UK's large‐scale quasi‐marketized Work Programme activation scheme, we develop the limited existing academic discussion of process well‐being effects, considering whether and how activation participation mediates the negative well‐being effects of unemployment, irrespective of any employment outcomes. We further relate variation in such process well‐being effects to the literature on activation typologies, in which ‘thinner’ work‐first activation interventions are linked to weaker process well‐being effects for participants compared to ‘thicker’ human capital development interventions. Confirming these expectations, our empirical work shows that Work Programme participants have, to date, experienced a largely ‘thin’ activation regime in which participants are both expected to, and empirically demonstrate, similar if not lower levels of process well‐being than those who are openly unemployed. These concerning findings speak to all nations seeking to promote the well‐being of unemployed people and particularly those perusing ‘black box’ activation schemes based around quasi‐marketization, devolution and New Public Management.     

‘Replacement Care’ for Working Carers? A Longitudinal Study in England, 2013–15

In the context of rising need for long‐term care, reconciling unpaid care and carers’ employment is becoming an important social issue. In England, there is increasing policy emphasis on paid services for the person cared for, sometimes known as ‘replacement care’, to support working carers. Previous research has found an association between ‘replacement care’ and carers’ employment. However, more information is needed on potential causal connections between services and carers’ employment. This mixed methods study draws on new longitudinal data to examine service receipt and carers’ employment in England. Data were collected from carers who were employed in the public sector, using self‐completion questionnaires in 2013 and 2015, and qualitative interviews were conducted with a sub‐sample of respondents to the 2015 questionnaire. We find that, where the person cared for did not receive at least one ‘key service’ (home care, personal assistant, day care, meals, short‐term breaks), the carer was subsequently more likely to leave employment because of caring, suggesting that the absence of services contributed to the carer leaving work. In the interviews, carers identified specific ways in which services helped them to remain in employment. We conclude that, if a policy objective is to reduce the number of carers leaving employment because of caring, there needs to be greater access to publicly‐funded services for disabled and older people who are looked after by unpaid carers.     

The ambiguity of social return policies in the Netherlands

Social procurement policies, which aim to create employment opportunities for vulnerable groups, such as the long‐term unemployed and the disabled, have become increasingly popular in recent years. Despite their growing popularity, empirical research on this topic is limited. Combining insights from the social policy and public administration literatures, we explore the development and implementation of “social return” policies by the Dutch government. These policies are a form of social procurement that require private employers to spend a percentage of public tenders to hire individuals far removed from the labor market. Social procurement appears, by definition, to be a form of social investment. However, our analysis of the ideas underlying its use in the Netherlands suggests that significant contradictions exist, with evidence of neoliberal New Public Management tendencies, social investment, and the more recent form of public administration, New Public Service. Using extensive document analysis of parliamentary documents, discussions and evaluative reports from 2008 to 2014, we reveal the tensions inherent in the Dutch approach and discuss possible implications for our understanding of social policy and administration as well as social protection.     

‘He told me to calm down and all that’: a qualitative study of forms of social support in youth mentoring relationships

The worldwide growth in formal youth mentoring programmes over the past two decades is partly a response to the perception that young people facing adversity do not have access to supportive relationships with adults and positive role models in their communities to the degree they once had. Formal mentoring programmes facilitate the development of a friendship or ‘match’ between an older volunteer and a young person, with the objective of supporting the young persons’ personal and social development. Drawing on 66 semi‐structured interviews with young people, parents, mentors and caseworkers associated with nine youth mentoring matches in the Big Brothers Big Sisters Programme in Ireland, this paper analyses the forms of social support evident in the mentor–mentee relationships and highlights how the mentoring relationship was perceived to have impacted on the well‐being of the young people participating. The findings reflect the consensus in the mentoring literature that close, well‐established mentoring relationships have the potential to bring about meaningful change in the lives of young people.     

Practices of activation in frontline interactions: Coercion,persuasion, and the role of trust in activation policies in Germany

Following Michael Lipsky's well‐known argument that policy is made in the daily encounters between street‐level bureaucracy and citizens, a growing body of research emphasizes that actors and organizations delivering social and labor‐market policy play a crucial role in welfare‐state politics. Using qualitative data collected at three local employment agencies in Germany, this article explores worker‐client relations as a crucial mechanism through which activation policies are translated into practice. The analysis investigates how caseworkers define their role and their relationships with clients. The findings show that it is essential for caseworkers to achieve client compliance. In such a context, building relationships of trust is a strategic instrument in overcoming possible barriers to co‐operation in the caseworker‐client interaction. Caseworkers develop strategies to create the impression of trustworthiness and to motivate both unemployed clients and employers to become trust‐givers in the caseworker‐client relation. While research has often stressed the dichotomy between disciplining and enabling elements of activation policies, our explorative study shows that persuasion and trust‐building are a further important dimension of the frontline delivery of activation policies. These strategies reflect the importance of emotional aspects of frontline work.     

Unemployment and economic security for young adults in Finland,Norway and Sweden: From unemployment protection to poverty relief

In this study, we investigated if there has been a displacement in the type and coverage of welfare services available for young unemployed adults in Finland, Norway and Sweden over the last two decades. This question is important because a number of studies have argued that the generous unemployment benefits and extensive labour market intervention found in the Nordic welfare states shield young people from the most severe consequences of economic inactivity. In this article, we instead show that during this period, less generous means‐tested unemployment and social assistance benefits have become the most important form of income protection for young people. In evidence, earnings‐related unemployment benefits now cover only 10 per cent of unemployed Swedes and Finns and 45 per cent of unemployed Norwegians aged 24 years or younger. This development marks a significant change in our understanding of unemployment protection for young people in Nordic countries.     

Facilitating access to services for children and families: lessons from Sure Start Local Programmes

With the introduction of the highly publicized Sure Start Local Programme (SSLP) initiative in 1998, the UK government introduced a community‐based set of provisions targeted at families with children under 4 years who were living in some of the 20% most deprived and disadvantaged geographical areas in England. These programmes were designed to combat the adverse effects of poverty and disadvantage on the long‐term outcomes for children and families. One challenging dimension for programme development has been the facilitation of access to the services on offer in these programmes. Drawing on findings from the implementation module within the government‐commissioned National Evaluation of Sure Start, this paper examines the way in which SSLPs have sought to facilitate access to services for their local communities and to encourage community members to take up and continue using those services. This paper presents a detailed overview of programme activity in respect of access. It identifies a continuum of access and a model of three styles of parental service use. The paper highlights the implications of the SSLP implementation process for the development of subsequent related initiatives such as children’s centres and extended schools.     

What works best when? The role of active labour market policy programmes in different business cycles

Nordlund M. What works best when? The role of active labour market policy programmes in different business cycles Int J Soc Welfare 2011: 20: 43–54 © 2009 The Author, Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare. At what point in a business cycle do long‐term unemployed persons gain most from participation in active labour market policy programmes (ALMP) as compared with openly unemployed persons? This article studies this question from the perspective of individual human capital with the hazard of labour market exit and chances of future labour market stability and equal post‐unemployment income as output variables. All the long‐term unemployed in Sweden were followed on a four‐year basis, with 1993 (recession) and 1999 (boom) as starting years. The study shows mainly positive effects among participants regardless of the state of the market. However, ALMP training has a ‘bridging’ effect over different labour market conditions, and a quick return to the regular labour market is, therefore, not as important for the success of participation as it is among ALMP employment participants.     

The 'Dole or Drudgery' Dilemma: Education, the Work Ethic and Unemployment

Before the recession, Labour ministers claimed that much unemployment in the UK was voluntary. While social policy authors have repeatedly countered such claims by stressing that unemployed people generally possess a strong work ethic and employment commitment, their accounts typically neglect the role that choosiness in job search behaviour plays in deciding individuals' employment status. Fifty in‐depth interviews with both unemployed and employed respondents exposed considerable diversity in attitudes towards ‘dole’ (being unemployed and claiming unemployment benefits) and ‘drudgery’ (doing less attractive jobs). The more educated were more likely to prefer ‘dole’ to ‘drudgery’ (this was also found using National Child Development Study survey data), yet they usually found jobs despite their greater choosiness. Those with very low educational attainment often desperately wanted jobs but could not find them due to their low employability – which might offer an explanation for the often replicated (yet paradoxical) finding that unemployed people generally exhibit a strong work ethic and pro‐employment attitudes and behaviours. Furthermore, the findings indicate that the scope for many Jobseeker's Allowance claimants to increase their net income by undertaking an unattractive job is greater than social policy authors often imply. The question of ‘who must do the least attractive jobs?’ has been neglected by both social policy academics and policy‐makers.     

Employment relations and dismissal regulations: Does employment legislation protect the health of workers?

Sociologists have long acknowledged that being in a precarious labour market position, whether employed or unemployed, can harm peoples' health. However, scholars have yet to fully investigate the possible contextual, institutional determinants of this relationship. Two institutions that were overlooked in previous empirical studies are the regulations that set minimum compensation for dismissal, severance payments, and entitlements to a period of notice before dismissal, notice periods. These institutions may be important for workers' health as they influence the degree of insecurity that workers are exposed to. Here, we test this hypothesis by examining whether longer notice periods and greater severance payments protect the health of labour market participants, both employed and unemployed. We constructed two cohorts of panel data before and during the European recession using data from 22 countries in the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (person years = 338,000). We find more generous severance payments significantly reduce the probability that labour market participants, especially the unemployed, will experience declines in self‐reported health, with a slightly weaker relationship for longer notice periods.     

Chronic child abuse and domestic violence: children and families with long‐term and complex needs

It is estimated that up to one million children may have been exposed to domestic violence in the UK, with significant consequences for their social and emotional development in childhood and later life. At a time when the central and devolved administrations in the UK have developed strategies to tackle domestic violence, this paper reports the findings from a study conducted on children in the child protection system with long‐term and complex needs as a result of experiencing domestic violence. The research identifies the characteristics of the children and their families and tracks their careers through the child protection system. The findings indicate that professionals have an awareness of domestic violence, and that younger children with younger parents are most likely to experience prolonged periods in the child protection system. Domestic violence in this context typically co‐exists in families experiencing other difficulties such as substance misuse and socio‐economic deprivation. In conclusion, the paper argues that Government policy and professional practice should primarily be concerned with assessing the risk that men present, rather than the risk that children are at. By reframing professional interventions, men are more likely to be challenged to accept responsibility for their behaviour and the consequences for their families.     

Social Exclusion and Civil Law: Experience of Civil Justice Problems among Vulnerable Groups

Combating social exclusion has become a priority target for many governments and was a key factor in the establishment of the Legal Services Commission (LSC) and the Community Legal Service (CLS) in England and Wales in April 2000. This study aims to assess whether socially excluded groups within the general population are more likely to suffer justiciable problems (problems for which there is a potential legal remedy) and whether such groups differ in their problem resolution strategies and advice‐seeking behaviour. We draw upon a large‐scale survey of 5,611 people representative of the population of England and Wales, and a further survey of 197 people in temporary accommodation. Five vulnerable groups are extracted: survey respondents with a long‐term illness or disability, young and elderly respondents, low‐income respondents and those living in temporary accommodation. We identify how some of these vulnerable groups have a high likelihood of experiencing justiciable problems. We also examine advice‐seeking strategies among our vulnerable groups and, where contact was made, which advisers were typically contacted. The findings demonstrate the potentially crucial role of access to justice and advice and legal services in tackling social exclusion.     

Integrating citizen's income with social insurance

Citizen's income or social dividend schemes are a way of avoiding the "poverty trap", or disincentive effect, inherent in withdrawing unemployment compensation completely when the beneficiary returns to work. If there are inadequate financial incentives for the unemployed to return to work, the benefit administration may feel the need for tighter discipline of the unemployed, threatening to withdraw benefit from those who reject offers of low-paid work. Citizen's income provides better incentives to work without so much need for sanctions. The article explores four different methods of introducing a citizen's income gradually by allowing people to keep an increasing proportion of their benefit as they move from unemployment into work. New transfers would also be made to never-unemployed workers, to secure equity between all persons whatever their employment status or history. The best method is to define an hourly unemployment benefit, and make benefit for a certain number of hours unconditional on employment status. This gives better incentives to work part-time than existing benefit systems, and fairer treatment for those who can only find a part-time job. Minimum wage regulation is important, to prevent employers taking advantage of a citizen's income to reduce wage rates.     

Achieving fuller working lives: labour market and policy issues in the United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom there has been a shift away from policies promoting early retirement towards an emphasis on extended, fuller working lives. This article examines the nature of policy change in this area and prospects for individuals remaining in work longer. Pension ages for men and women are rising rapidly and by 2028 are likely to reach 67 years. Cash benefits for those out of work before state pension age are becoming harder to access and incentives for working beyond 65 are being enhanced. In this context, restrictions have been placed on the use of mandatory retirement ages by employers. Employees have also been granted the right to request flexible employment. However, a lack of coordinated policy up until now means that important challenges exist with regard to extending working lives. Ill‐health and low levels of qualifications limit the employment prospects of many older people, particularly among those in the poorest segments. Likewise, retention rates of older workers may have improved, but prospects for recruitment in older age remain poor. Policies focusing on the individual have also not yet recognised the extent to which employment in older age is influenced by the household and wider family context.