Abstract
|
The latest financial crises which affected whole developed world and also Slovenia, greatly increased the level of unemployment. This has grown since 2009, from 6.7% in 2009 to 13.2% in 2015. From 2015 employment rate is increasing but due to demographic trends, growth will slow down over time. In particular, it will be necessary to find measures that will encourage longer working activity of the elderly and ensure the income security of young people.
Public policy makers have long been engaged in the search for effective solutions to eliminate long-term unemployment, underemployment, atypical or precarious jobs, working poor, etc. Those challenges are to be mostly addressed through measures in the context of an active employment policy (ALMP). It is therefore a set of labour market measures aimed at increasing employment and reducing unemployment, increasing the employability of people on the labour market and increasing the competitiveness and flexibility of employers.
One of the main objectives of this paper is to analyse the effectiveness of ALMP programs to integrate long-term unemployed into the labour market. We want to find out whether the measures increase the individual's employment prospects, and consequently reduce the degree of inactivity and reduce the dependence of such individuals on monetary social assistance. Within this goal, we want to determine the factors for the integration of long-term unemployed persons into ALMP programs. The task will be limited to determining the effectiveness of those programs and measures that help unemployed individuals to become employed, as the universal basic income is a measure that is tied to an individual rather than to an enterprise.
The assessment of the effects of the ALMP from the microeconomic point of view on labour market adjustment issues, focusing on changes related to unemployment, will be used by micro-econometric techniques, probit and logit regression, which are most often used to study the descriptive incidence of the unemployed in various groups of the population. A matching model is particularly useful for assessing the effectiveness of the ALMP. The coefficients related to the number of job vacancies, the number of unemployed and employment programs tell us how much the output will increase in employment if these variables increase. The positive link between the expenditure for the programs, the number of participants and the exits for employment will confirm the effectiveness of the measures.
Lately, as an alternative to the ALMP, the idea of universal basic income (UBI) is increasingly being used. UBI is an income that differs from other forms of income in three important features: it`s paid to an individual and not to the household, it`s paid out regardless of to other sources of income and without requiring any form of work or a willingness to accept work if offered. Since 2015 the concept of UBI has flourished - Finland, as the first EU Member State, decided to pilot a pilot project, inter alia, to check whether long-term unemployed people are more likely involved in the labour market if they are recipients of UBIs as is the case between those who are recipients of classical compensation and state measures. The results of the ALMP efficacy analysis, obtained through probit and logit regression, will tell us whether consideration of UBI as an alternative to ALMP is even meaningful.
Key words: public policy, labour market, effectiveness of ALMP, UBI, probit and logit regression.
|
