The global economic crisis has seriously affected the EU labour market, leaving over 23 million people across the Union unemployed and with little hope of finding a new job in the coming months.
In the last year and a half alone, 4.3 million jobs were lost – constituting 1.9% of the total EU workforce. Unemployment is expected to reach 10% and stay at that level until at least 2011.
In his first 'State of the Union' speech, European Commission President José Manuel Barroso unveiled plans to help fill the four million vacant jobs across the EU-27, including a 'European Vacancy Monitor' (EurActiv 08/09/10).
In June, European leaders adopted the 'Europe 2020' strategy – the EU's successor to the Lisbon Strategy - which has the aim of establishing a smart, sustainable economy over the next ten years. Raising the employment level is one of the strategy's five quantitative headline goals, whereby individual national targets will be agreed in the autumn.
The employment target is to increase the job rate among 20-64 year olds to 75% by 2020, which signifies a 7% increase over the next ten years, as the current EU-wide figure is 69%. Though the international standard for measuring employment rates is the 15-64 age range, 15-19 year olds in almost all EU member states are obliged to attend secondary school.
Central Europe: Governments prepare wide-ranging reforms
In the four 'Visegrad' EU countries – the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland – governments are readying national employment policy measures to kick-start economic growth and increase the job rate among their citizens, notably the young, the old and the long-term unemployed.
The Czech job market was hit hard by the crisis and the government will have to implement key reforms if the country is to achieve its 2020 target, which the previous government set at 75%, matching the EU-wide goal. In 2009, the employment rate among 20-64 year olds was 70.9%, down from a high of 72.4% the year before.
The country has set itself a number of partial national targets – focussing on raising employment among women and older workers and reducing unemployment among 15-24 year olds and lower-skilled workers. The new government is unlikely to change the targets and hopes to boost the flexibility of the job market, cut red tape and simplify conditions for SMEs (EurActiv 09/09/10).
In Slovakia, where the job rate stood at 66.4% in 2009, the new government has two key aims: pulling jobless citizens out of the 'social trap' – where the economic motivation to work is low – and fighting the serious problem of long-term unemployment.
For many Slovaks, the generous social subsistence system means it makes little financial difference whether they work or not. Over half of its unemployed people have been jobless for more than a year. To tackle the problem, the government plans to introduce a 'labour intermarket' – based on a combination of social benefits and part-time work – and provide tax incentives to companies to hire long-term jobless citizens (EurActiv 03/09/10).
As for Hungary, the government has pledged to create one million jobs over the next ten years – an ambitious plan that would help bring the country's employment rate up to 70% by the year 2020, the figure reportedly proposed by the European Commission.
The current rate among 20-64 year olds in Hungary is just 60.4%, meaning that real efforts will be required to meet this target. According to an expert from the country's statistical office, Hungary could get to 70% if one million jobs are successfully created and filled, as many of the 1.9 million 'inactive' workers would re-enter the labour market (EurActiv 06/09/10).
Poland has had one of the lowest employment rates in the EU in recent years – less than 60% – and it is particularly low among women and the over-50s due to early retirement and pre-retirement benefits. The job rate has been helped by mass emigration and the declining population, however.
In 2008, Prime Minister Donald Tusk reformed the pension system, a controversial move that deprived around 750,000 Poles of the possibility of early retirement and should boost the employment rate among those over 50. The Polish Labour Ministry is also focusing on an ''active'' policy that aims to bring unemployed citizens back into the labour market.
Bulgaria ambitious, Romania struggling
Despite Bulgaria's high jobless rate and considerable pessimism among its citizens, the Bulgarian government has sets its sights high. It not only believes it can match the EU-wide 75% benchmark but has set itself a slightly higher national target of 76%: an ''ambitious but not impossible'' goal, according to Deputy Minister of Labour and Social Policy Krasimir Popov.
To achieve this target, the employment rate will have to increase by 0.75 percentage points each year until 2020. The government is confident that this can happen once the crisis subsides and is planning measures to combat long-term unemployment, improve the flexibility of the market and increase the skills and knowledge of the workforce.
Yet many Bulgarian citizens do not share the government's optimism. According to a Eurobarometer survey carried out in May, 95% of Bulgarians view the economic and employment situation as ''bad'' and 30% are expecting more problems on the labour market (EurActiv 31/08/10).
In neighbouring Romania, the unemployment rate has been on a downward spiral over the last decade and stood at just 58.6% at the end of 2009 – compared to 64.2% in 1998. Over the same period, the average rate across the EU rose from 61.2% to 64.6%.
The Romanian job market has lost over two million people in the past few years due to emigration. Large diaspora communities have formed in Spain and Italy, while EU jobs in Brussels also attract young Romanians. In the spring, Labour Minister Mihai Seitan stated that while the EU's target is 75%, Romania is nearer 50%. Women, young people and the over-45s are particularly struggling to find jobs.
However, one area of work that is not counted in the country's employment figure is subsistence farming, points out Cristian Ghinea from the Romanian Centre for European Policies. 30% of Romanians work in agriculture and this includes those who focus mainly on growing enough food to feed their families, she noted (EurActiv 08/09/10).
