On March 18 th , 2024, as part of the activities of the Community of Practice on Employment, Education, and Skills under the ESF+ programme and the Social Innovation+ Initiative, a webinar was run on a study: Towards zero long-term unemployment in the EU: Job guarantees and other innovative approaches .
At the webinar amongst the implementation insights highlighted were the:
Territorial Aspect
- Emphasis on small communities, except Solidarity Basic Income in Berlin
- Successful examples in both rural and urban settings
Target Group, Job Profiles, and Costs
- Target group: mainly 45-60 years, unemployed 3-5 years
- Part-time jobs (25-35 hours), social economy & municipalities
- Average cost per participant: €22,000 - €32,000
Duration, Partnerships, and Outreach
- Minimum project duration: three years
- Collaborations with local employment actors
- Outreach activities, including door-to-door efforts
Amongst the challenges identified were incentives to enter and transition to open labour market; efficiency of local and central governments; strong local third sector, committed to local cooperation; quality and matching of newly-created jobs; financial sustainability: central government co-funding; and the need for more quantitative evidence of cost-effectiveness.
While amongst the strengths the list included: positive impact on economic and social well-being; tailored jobs involving local stakeholders; high participant satisfaction; low drop-out rates, sustained employment; and the potential value for local community building.
In the French programme, Territoires zéro chômeur de longue durée (TZCLD), the presenter highlighted the right to employment and the three beliefs integral to their work:
- Nobody is unemployable - when jobs are adapted to people's abilities and skills.
- There's no shortage of work - there is still a vast amount of useful and varied activities to be done, when the criterion of market profitability is not the sole determining factor in the choice of activity.
- There's no lack of money - employment deprivation costs the community more than the creation of the jobs needed to make employment a right.
The report of the study describes “five ongoing initiatives in Europe including Austria’s Marienthal Job Guarantee Pilot (MAGMA), France’s Territoires zéro chômeur de longue durée (TZCLD) as well as the Belgium’s adaptation of the French model, Germany’s Solidaric Basic Income (SBI) project and the Netherland’s Basisbaan.” The authors note that “These initiatives share common features such as addressing long-term unemployment through local and regional approaches, building on voluntary participation, offering fair remuneration and flexible working hours. As such, they need to be distinguished from basic income experiments that do not offer jobs, as well as from public works and ‘transitional’ employment schemes that focus on activating and returning participants to the primary labour market, often including the loss of benefits.” (p5)
They go on to say that “Lessons learned from the mapping of initiatives include: promoting local collaboration for an inclusive labour market; encouraging co-funding from various sources with matching grants from national governments; prioritising non-monetary benefits and innovation in project design; providing tailored support and upskilling for the unemployed; specifying target groups and types of jobs created; proactively considering transferability and upscaling; and emphasising rigorous research with mandatory counterfactual evaluation for evidence-based decision-making and continuous updating and meta-analysis at EU level.” (p5)
In the conclusions on page thirty-six the authors state that “ Zero long-term unemployment (Zero LTU) initiatives and job guarantee programmes are promising initiatives to combat long-term unemployment while improving services and enhancing the quality of life in the communities. As a complement or alternative to activation policies, they have proven that there is room for a ‘capability route’ and that they can ensure an appropriate balance between employment and social policies. They also clearly differ from basic income programmes. While the activation route places its focus on employment, often using a (national) top-down approach, the Zero LTU and job guarantee examples studied in this report are local, bottom-up initiatives that focus on the capabilities of participants and the quality of work. There are many lessons that can be drawn from the analysis of these examples that may be helpful in initiating, funding, or implementing similar initiatives at regional, national, or European level.”
The full report is available at Unlocking Opportunities: Introducing a Study on Job Guarantees initiatives in Europe | European social fund agency (esf.lt)