Spain has the most serious and persistent unemployment problem in Europe, with an unemployment rate that reached 24.6 percent in early 1994. This paper explores the characteristics of this unemployment problem, its causes, and provides a brief discussion of recent labor market reform measures and their likely Impact. A demographic shift in recent years has produced a large rise in female labor force participation and a decrease in agricultural jobs to which the economy has been unable to adjust. The effects of generous unemployment benefits and the large underground economy may explain 6–12 percentage points of the resulting unemployment, but the remainder must be explained by failures and rigidities in the labor market. The paper presents econometric evidence that unemployment displays hysteresis, and that wages are not responsive to changes in the unemployment rate. This evidence supports the claim that insider-outsider factors and rigidities in the legal structure of the labor market are responsible for much of the high unemployment rate. Recent reforms have improved the functioning of the labor market, but they are unlikely to be sufficient to reduce unemployment to single digit rates without further action.

This book focuses on the modeling of the transitions in and out of unemployment, given the stochastic processes that break up jobs and lead to the formation of new jobs, and on the implications of this approach for macroeconomic equilibrium and for the efficiency of the labor market. An equilibrium theory of unemployment assumes that firms and workers maximize their payoffs under rational expectations and that wages are determined to exploit the private gains from trade. This book focuses on the modeling of the transitions in and out of unemployment, given the stochastic processes that break up jobs and lead to the formation of new jobs, and on the implications of this approach for macroeconomic equilibrium and for the efficiency of the labor market. This approach to labor market equilibrium and unemployment has been successful in explaining the determinants of the "natural" rate of unemployment and new data on job and worker flows, in modeling the labor market in equilibrium business cycle and growth models, and in analyzing welfare policy. The second edition contains two new chapters, one on endogenous job destruction and one on search on the job and job-to-job quitting. The rest of the book has been extensively rewritten and, in several cases, simplified.

This edited collection provides the first in-depth analysis of social policies and the risks faced by young people. The book explores the effects of both the economic crisis and austerity policies on the lives of young Europeans, examining both the precarity of youth transitions, and the function of welfare state policies.

In North-American and European cities, youth live in precarious social and economic conditions. The issue of employment has become a political problem. In this volume, sociological, economical and ethnographical perspectives are used to explain ethnic discrimination, inequalities at school, unemployment and marginalization. Work remains a central value in young peoples' lives who not only are victimized but also try to find escapes. Originally in French, this extended and updated book contains contributions by Enrico Pugliese, Saskia Sassen, Min Zhou, Frangois Dubet, Paul Anisef, Paul Axelrod, Ida Susser and others.

In this innovative book, Alan France looks not at the economic impact of the global economic crisis and great recession of the past decade, but at the effect these forces have had on our very understanding of youth through its associated institutions. Using eight countries as case studies, he undertakes an in-depth sociological analysis of historical and contemporary developments in secondary education, training, work, and welfare policy to show how the ecological landscape of youth has been affected. Mapping the growing influence of neoliberalism as a political strategy in each of the countries, he shows how, after the crisis, the reconfiguration of institutions and practices that are central to the lives of the young is accelerating, bringing new meaning to youth, age, transition, diversity, risk, and inclusion.

This book includes empirical contributions focusing on disadvantaged workers. According to the European Commission’s definition, disadvantaged workers include categories of workers with difficulties entering the labour market without assistance and hence, requiring the application of public measures aimed at improving their employment opportunities. In addition to the labour market perspective, this is also relevant in terms of social cohesion, which is one of the central objectives of the European Union and of its Member States. This work deals with the most relevant groups of disadvantaged workers, namely disabled workers, young workers, women living in depressed areas, migrants in the labour market and the long-term unemployed, and analyses the situation in the Italian, Spanish and some African labour markets. The determinants of disadvantage in the labour market are investigated, highlighting both the role of supply variables, including structural factors and the weakness on the demand side, the role of the economic crisis and the ineffectiveness of some labour policies. A complex framework emerges in which disadvantaged groups may share common problems, both in terms of integration into the labour market and in terms of working conditions, but often require group-specific policies, taking into account their intergroup heterogeneity.