OECD employment outlook: 2004

This report contains detailed analyses of a number of significant policy issues in OECD countries associated with employment and the labour market. The editorial reassesses the Jobs Strategy 10 years after its adoption by OECD countries. The focus of chapter one, ‘Recent labour market developments and prospects’, is on working time and it considers working time from two perspectives: (1) how working time patterns interact with employment rates to influence total labour input and growth; and (2) how working hours affect the time use patterns and welfare of workers and their families. The main findings of chapter two, ‘Employment protection regulation and labour market performance’, are: over the past 15 years, a process of convergence across OECD countries has taken place as regards employment protection legislation (EPL); employment protection regulation fulfils its stated purpose, namely protecting existing jobs; the net impact of EPL on aggregate unemployment is therefore ambiguous and can only be resolved by empirical investigation; differences in the strictness of EPL for regular and temporary jobs may be an important element in explaining the rise in the incidence of temporary work for youth and the low skilled; any overall assessment of EPL has to weigh costs against benefits; the precise balance between the different policy planks depends on country circumstances and institutions. Chapter three, ‘Wage-setting institutions and outcomes’, reassesses some of the evidence underlying the Jobs Strategy recommendations concerning wage setting, focusing on updating and extending the OECD’s indicators of the organisation of collective bargaining. Chapter four, ‘Improving skills for more and better jobs: does training make a difference?’, attempts to bridge the gap in research in the area of the relationship between employee training and employment security, by building on both cross-country comparative aggregate data on training and longitudinal surveys that were not available in the mid-1990s when the OECD Jobs Strategy was launched. Chapter five, ‘Informal employment and promoting the transition to a salaried economy’, examines so-called ‘informal’, ‘undeclared’ or ‘underground’ employment, i.e. employment which falls mainly outside the scope of taxation, social insurance and other regulations. The chapter concludes that although levels of informal employment in a majority of OECD countries are fairly low, keeping them low is an important policy objective. In other OECD countries, where informal employment is moderately high, action is needed across a wide range of policy areas. The final section of this chapter discusses key policy issues and strategic recommendations which could be used for the reassessment of the Jobs Strategy.

This report contains detailed analyses of a number of significant policy issues in OECD countries associated with employment and the labour market. The editorial reassesses the Jobs Strategy 10 years after its adoption by OECD countries. The focus of chapter one, ‘Recent labour market developments and prospects’, is on working time and it considers working time from two perspectives: (1) how working time patterns interact with employment rates to influence total labour input and growth; and (2) how working hours affect the time use patterns and welfare of workers and their families. The ...  [+] Show more