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This paper observes trends in unemployment in the European Union. It uses scholar books and online sources to investigate the issue. It also establishes changes in European unemployment trends with new members joining the European Union. Outline Introduction Discussion Structure of unemployment Changes of European market and its influence on unemployment Unemployment and poverty European unemployment policies Unemployment caused by expansion of the European Union Conclusion Unemployment in the European Union The availability of jobs in a country member of European Union is heavily influenced by the overall performance of the countrys economy. Although social exclusion manifestly has complex roots and consequences, the macro economy clearly has a potent influence in determining social outcomes, and a direct link to the level of unemployment can readily be demonstrated.
Macroeconomic factors are thought to affect social exclusion in three main ways. First, the increased pace of structural change stemming from factors such as globalization is, arguably, likely to result in existing skills becoming redundant more rapidly in future. The structure of unemployment in Western Europe, already well advanced in post-industrial capitalism, has been different from that in the eastern parts of the Continent, where de industrialization has begun only recently in that highly skilled employees have been more affected than low-skill manual workers. Formal and, of concern here, informal-sector work-seeking migrations of highly skilled West Europeans have been a common phenomenon within the European Union, and their recent appearance in East Central Europe can be viewed as a reflection of that regions progressive incorporation into the European and larger, global system of internationalized, two-pronged economies. (Zielonka, 2002) The process of continuing change is asymmetric in the sense that an adverse shock of a given size in terms of income and wealth tends to result in more unemployment and social exclusion than a favorable shock of the same size reduces them. Thus, to prevent social exclusion from remaining at higher levels, a disproportionate response is required (Hvinden, 1999). If this does not occur through favorable macroeconomic shocks or macroeconomic performance, then offsetting microeconomic measures will be required.
Third, major regime changes that alter the nature of the economy affect the scope for macroeconomic adjustment. EMU is a prime example of such a change, through having a single currency and monetary policy, regulating competition in the Internal Market, establishing rules for the conduct of fiscal policy through the Stability and Growth Pact, and coordinating other structural policies. The cross-national comparisons in the European Union confirm that in most countries unemployment brings a higher risk of poverty. But at the same time, the extent to which this is the case varies substantially between countries. The European Union is confronted by a number of longer run trends that will bear on the incidence of, and capacity to respond to, unemployment problems. Thus, the imminent enlargement of the European Union brought in new Member States with significantly lower labor costs, and even if the enlargement is ultimately of mutual benefit, it was expected to have local and sectoral impacts that will constitute new causes of unemployment with the attendant risk of intensified social exclusion.
Taking the relative measure, the proportions ranged from only 18 per cent of the unemployed in poverty in Denmark to 43 per cent in the United Kingdom. The differences reflected to a considerable extent the operation of the welfare system, with generous social transfers in Denmark lifting a much higher proportion of the unemployed out of poverty than the more restricted social transfer system in the United Kingdom. With respect to self-reported financial hardship, it is clear that the level of economic development in a country was also of major importance. While the unemployed were again most protected in Denmark, financial hardship was particularly marked in the Southern European countries and in Ireland, as well as in the United Kingdom. However, comparative research has revealed major differences between countries in the extent to which unemployment is associated with social isolation. The risks of unemployment in European Union members leading to social isolation are low in the Southern countries.
This is due to the fact that the unemployed in these countries are more frequently integrated into a family environment (particularly that of the parental family) and have patterns of local sociability that are both stronger and more informal in type, with lower entry costs. The most important factor underlying country differences in social isolation were prevailing patterns of household formation. The Central and Northern countries of the European Union have a high prevalence of single-person households and a tendency for young adults to leave the parental home at a relatively early age. In the Southern European countries on the other hand the family remains a pivotal institution, with extensive normative responsibilities for looking after the well-being of young adult children, and indeed, of providing for them within the parental home. How does poverty and social isolation affect the well-being of unemployed people?
There is now very consistent evidence about the general impact of unemployment on well-being. Studies confirm that this follows job loss (or the insecurity that comes from the announcement of redundancies) and cannot be accounted for by the selection into the ranks of the unemployed of those with poor mental health. Return to employment has also been shown to lead to a marked reduction in distress. The necessity to develop more inclusive policies in the European Union, as outlined in many programmatic documents of the European Commission and most specifically in the Employment Guidelines (CEC, 2001), is dependent on the thorough analysis of the key mechanisms linking adverse life events to the degree of social integration into society. The evidence is now incontrovertible that the absence of employment is a central factor determining poverty, social exclusion, and social integration. However, there is little support for any general claim about unemployed women being less committed to employment than men.
Research in the United Kingdom found that there was no difference in the employment commitment of adult unemployed men and women. Gallic and Alm (2000) found that unemployed women had higher employment commitment than unemployed men in all European Union countries, excluding Belgium, Germany, Ireland, and Portugal. Similarly, at least in the case of young unemployed people, the empirical support for the assumptions underlying the financial argument for lower employment commitment among women has been shown to be weak. Analyzing the financial situation of unemployed youth in six countries, Hammer and Julkunen (2003) found that young unemployed women reported higher levels of deprivation and lower disposable income in all countries. The steadily growing foreign investment in East Central Europe brings into the region sought-after services and consumer goods and very much needed modern technologies and management know-how. But thus far it has not resulted in the creation of a large pool of new jobs and is not expected to contribute significantly to it during the coming decade.
In 1998 foreign-investment companies in East Central Europe employed no more than 3. 5 - 4. 5 per cent of the national workforce in each of the three countries considered here. As indicated in studies, most foreign investors are interested in funding small- to middle-size enterprises employing between five and fifty people in localities with low unemployment, preferably large urban centers. Locally owned private firms in East Central Europe multiply very quickly, but most of them are small (up to ten employees), and the turnover is rapid. In the assessment of students of ECE economic transformation, the quickest growth of employment opportunities in these firms has occurred in the rapidly expanding informal sector. Although jobs in the expanding informal sectors of privatized ECE economies can be expected to become increasingly available with time, they are usually seasonal or temporal and, thus, do not constitute a stable source of income. Experienced migrants holding such jobs will, therefore, be likely to treat them not as a replacement for but as a supplement to their accustomed short-term income-seeking sojourns abroad.
Conversely, the great majority of Poles, Czechs and Hungarians who in recent surveys of ECE migratory intentions admitted they contemplated possibilities of future short-term migration to the West to earn money think of it as a supplement to (not the replacement of) their home-country earnings. The continued in formalization and internationalization of European Union economies confronted with intensified global competition in deregulated markets and the resulting contraction of the influence of the states on national economies, as well as the rapid ageing of the working-age population in the EU, should sustain rather than temper SE-NW income-seeking migrations from abroad. As a result, highly developed member countries such as Germany and Austria opened to employers from the much cheaper labor markets of Poland, Czech Republic and Greece. Subcontracted by West European firms on their home-country standards, workers from these countries are paid much lower wages and, because they receive social benefits at home, require no such contributions from host employers. Forty per cent of East Central Europeans (Poles ranking the highest and Hungarians the lowest) who contemplate future westbound income-seeking migrations expect help from relatives and friends at home or in the destination country to realize these plans. When the informal economic sector in the receiver societies remains the main opportunity for ECE migrant workers to earn sought-after income in the West - owing to high structural unemployment in Western Europe, the current, limited quotas of contract workers from East Central Europe are unlikely to be increased in the near future.
The West-East migration of highly skilled undocumented migrant-workers has been instigated by both the sending and the receiving sides of this transnational movement. The structure of unemployment in Western Europe, already well advanced in post-industrial capitalism, has been different from that in the eastern parts of the European Union where de industrialization has begun only recently in that highly skilled employees have been more affected than low-skill manual workers. Formal and, of concern here, informal-sector work-seeking migrations of highly skilled West Europeans have been a common phenomenon within the European Union, and their recent appearance in East Central Europe can be viewed as a reflection of that regions progressive incorporation into the European and larger, global system of internationalized, two-pronged economies. First, migration can lead to population growth and reductions in welfare from crowding and congestion. Second, if the arrives are allowed to participate in the political process, and their preferences for collective goods differ from those of the indigenous population, the outcomes from the political process may be altered to the disadvantage of the indigenous population.
A third fear often expressed concerning migration from poorer countries is that the migrants compete for jobs with the indigenous population, and bring about higher unemployment and / or lower wages. The most obvious ways to avoid the second and third sources of welfare loss are to deny new arrives the right to vote and an equal right to employment. Such measures would directly contradict what have until now been basic tenets of European integration policy, namely that all European Union citizens have equal rights to employment and, in time, to citizenship in other EU countries. But such restrictions are fully consistent with a confederate form of government, where individuals are seen as similar within countries, but different across them, and primary citizenship is defined at the level of the member country, not at the level of the confederacy. Equal rights to jobs and citizenship are difficult to defend, even within a federalist system, however, if migration has negative consequences for the indigenous population resulting in high unemployment rates. Bibliography: Hammer, T.
Julkunen, I. (2003). Surviving unemployment, a question of money or families? A comparative study of youth unemployment in Europe, in T. Hammer (ed. ) Youth Unemployment and Social Exclusion in Europe. Bristol: Policy Press. Hvinden, B. (1999).
Activation: A Nordic perspective, Linking Welfare and Work, Luxembourg: European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions. Lazarsfeld, P. , and Zeizel, H. (2002). The Sociology of an Unemployed Community. With a new introduction by Christian Fleck. New Brunswick: Transaction. Zielonka, Jan. (2002).
Europe Unbound: Enlarging and Reshaping the Boundaries of the European Union; Routledge. European Unemployment - Introduction, web Unemployment in the European Union: A Dynamic Reappraisal, web Eurozone Unemployment Hits Record Low, web European Union Regional policy - Wikipedia, web
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Research essay sample on This Observes Trends In Unemployment The European Union
