Changing Labour Markets and Employability Training in SEE

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Changing Labour Markets and Employability
Training in SEE Anastasia Fetsi, ETF
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Shifts in the Economic Structure of the SEE
countries

• larger share of the private sector to GDP due
  mainly to privatisation rather than the creation
  of new (medium size and large enterprises)
• increasing number of micro- and small enterprises
  
• large extent of informal economy
• shift of economic output from industry to service
  sector and a quite stable ( high) share of
  agriculture to GDP
• exports lower than imports and mainly
  concentrated in labour or natural resource
  intensive products
• Privatisation, FDI and technological
  transfer??????

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Labour market characteristics

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• Persistent and high unemployment levels (youth,
  women, older workers and specific population
  groups particularly hit)
• Activity and Employment levels are lower than in
  the EU or still kept high
• Regional disparities of employment and
  unemployment levels are more or less pronounced

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Labour market challenges

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• The first challenge in all transition countries
  is to reallocate labour from lower to higher
  productivity jobs.
• The number of new jobs have not been able to
  absorb redundancies and new entrants
• A large number of newly created jobs have been
  low skilled low paid jobs in SMEs and in the
  informal sector of the economy higher skill jobs
  have been few and so demand for higher skilled
  labour has been limited.
• Informality and labour market flexibility dual
  labour markets inclusive labour markets

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The notion of employability

• Occupational skills required for a particular job
  position
• Personal characteristics of the job seekers
  attitudes, application/motivation and behaviour
• Basic skills like the ability to read and write,
  understand and follow instructions and to
  communicate with fellow workers and clients
• Employability is not an issue confined to
  unemployed people only. People having a job are
  often exposed to employability deficits
• Employers set the standards for the employability
  of job seekers
• Employability is security

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The quality of the labour force

• Educational Attainment levels of the population
  have been improving in a number of SEE countries
  but are still in relative disadvantage with
  respect to the EU average in particular for
  highly skilled people.
• However the real skills of the labour force can
  not be documented as surveys are absent
• Ad hoc surveys to employers, through EU funded
  programmes, demonstrate a gap in  soft  skills,
  IT and foreign languages. On the other hand
  technical skill gaps are not particularly
  pronounced unless in dynamic sectors

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The quality of the training provision

• In the beginning of the transition process there
  has been a deterioration in the education and
  training provision. But there have been a lot of
  efforts to improve it and in the meantime we can
  see improvements in the majority of the countries
• Participation levels of youth in education and
  training are increasing high demand for higher
  education
• Employers still complain about the skills of
  young people (so employability) everywhere
• A lot of efforts have also been made in order to
  increase the quantity and quality of training
  provision for adults (mainly unemployed)

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Can training increase the employability of
individuals?

• By definition the answer is YES.
• In practice we need still to explore the
  efficiency of training to assist individuals to
  find a job. Evidence is still ad hoc and
  piecemeal but it can be found
• The main issue is what are the preconditions for
  training to help the individuals to find a job in
  the specific context of SEE countries?

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