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This document was prepared as background for chapter one, 'The jobs crisis: what are the implications for employment and social policy', of the 2009 edition of the OECD Employment Outlook [indexed at TD/TNC 98.271] and for the meeting of the OECD Employment, Labour and Social Affairs Committee at Ministerial level, 28-29 September 2009, OECD Conference Centre, Paris. It incorporates information made available to the OECD Secretariat reflecting policy announcements made up to May 2009 (or July 2009 for some countries). The document summarises the changes OECD countries have made to their labour market policies in response to the downturn, as of mid-2009. Most countries have implemented macroeconomic or sectoral reforms to stimulate aggregate demand or support employment in severely impacted sectors. These include measures such as increasing household spending power, investment in infrastructure, housing or alternative energy projects, giving priority for government purchasing to small businesses and direct subsidies or access to credit for industries or firms particularly hard hit by the downturn (e.g. car manufacturing, small and medium-sized businesses). While these packages are likely to stimulate aggregate demand and employment, they are not included in this paper, which focuses more narrowly on new and extended labour market and social policy measures. Automatic expansions of existing programs as unemployment increases (e.g. increase in the number of unemployment benefit recipients under pre-existing entitlement rules) are also outside the scope of this paper, despite their importance in the current economic context. More information on the scale and relative importance of fiscal stimulus packages and automatic stabilisers is available in the 2009 edition of the OECD Employment Outlook.