Search results

This report completes the analytical series using the 2001 Employers Skill Survey (ESS2001) (statistical report indexed at TD/TNC 69.214). The Exploring Local Areas, Skills and Unemployment (ELASU) analysis was designed to explore the relationship between relatively high levels of unemployment and hard-to-fill vacancies in some local areas, first identified in ESS1999 and subsequently referred to as an 'apparent paradox'. ELASU was multi-faceted, involving three main elements: an exploratory data analysis at local area level (report indexed at TD/TNC 73.363); multivariate econometric analysis of the relationship between vacancies and local unemployment (report indexed at TD/TNC 73.366); and qualitative interviews with employers who had experienced recruitment difficulties in areas where both levels of unemployment and vacancies were relatively high (report indexed at TD/TNC 73.365). This report provides a summary and synthesis of all three elements. It presents a brief overview of the relationship between vacancies (as a measure of recruitment problems) and unemployment and summary evidence on the nature of recruitment difficulties in England and how these compare to unemployment at a national level. The report then considers the extent to which relatively high levels of unemployment and considerable recruitment difficulties co-exist at a local level. It covers regional variations as well as intra-regional variations in the local distribution of recruitment difficulties and unemployment, providing an initial assessment of the evidence that some areas feature a paradoxically high level of both recruitment problems and unemployment. The report then considers the causes and effects of recruitment problems in more detail. Some possible explanations for the incidence and intensity of recruitment problems, based on the econometric analysis of ESS2001 data at an establishment level, are presented. The report then focuses on the qualitative evidence emerging from the detailed case studies and the reasons why the unemployed are not widely used to fill hard-to-fill vacancies. The conclusion outlines policy implications of the research findings.