Employment growth has been impressive during the last year according to the Joint Employment Report, to be adopted by Employment Ministers on 29 February. Almost 6.5 million new jobs were created during the last two years and another 5 million jobs are forecast by 2009. Unemployment in the EU is expected to fall to under 7% in 2008, the lowest level since the mid-1980s. The Report – which assesses Member States’ implementation of their national reform programmes in the area of employment – is strongly upbeat. However, it also points to a number of ongoing areas for concern, notably youth unemployment and under-investment in education and training.
“Recent labour market reforms are beginning to show an impact,” said VladimÃr Špidla, EU Employment Commissioner. “Structural unemployment has fallen by one third since 2004 and the EU employment rate, currently at 66%, has moved much closer to our overall target of 70%. All Member States have implemented substantive reforms since 2005, but some have responded more robustly than others. We need to redouble our efforts to effectively respond to the challenges of globalisation and ageing, in particular by investing more, and in a more targeted way, in lifelong learning.”
Employment rates for older workers: 43.5% (target is 50%) and for women: 57.2% (target is 60%) are continuing to rise strongly across the EU as a whole. But despite the positive performance in 2006,
Unemployment dropped significantly from 8.9% in 2005 to 8.2% in 2006 and almost all Member States contributed to this trend. Both women and men benefited as the unemployment rate fell to respectively 9% and 7.6%. A notable indicator of the robustness of the current labour market performance is that the long-term unemployment rate fell for the second year in a row, from 4% to 3.6%. labour market needs, is essential to close the productivity gap with our key global competitors, says the Report. Learning needs to start at a very early age and continue throughout life, and qualifications learnt on the job need to be recognised across
Bottlenecks are appearing and with pressing labour and skills shortages in an increasing number of sectors (e.g. health care and elderly care; education; many artisan or crafts sectors; engineering), there is a need for more and better forecasting and monitoring of future skills needs.
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