Effectiveness of youth labour market policies in Central and Eastern Europe

16/05/2022

CEE countries have used similar active labour market policies to reduce youth unemployment and face similar issues in improving the design of these policies.

Public Employment Services (PES) in Central and Eastern Europe often have strong incentives to focus on short-term impacts and the absorbtion of EU funds when implementing active labour market policies (ALMPs). These reduce their motivation for reaching out to vulnerable youth, and often lead to the creaming of programme participants, that is, when the PES selects those with better employment prospects rather than those who would profit from a programme the most. 

These lessons emerged from the seminar organised by the Budapest Institute on 12-13 May 2022 at the Central European University (CEU). The seminar aimed to create a forum for analysts and policy-oriented academic researchers to have an in-depth discussion of the recent evidence on ALMP for youth. The discussion focused, first, on policy design (what works well, why and in what institutional context) and, second, on data and methodology, in particular on the potential use of administrative data for counterfactual impact evaluations. The presentations and discussions produced several insights that may contribute to improving the effectiveness of active labour market policies: for further insights, please read our follow-up brief.

Keynote speakers included Jochen Kluve (Head of Evaluation at the KfW Development Bank and Professor of Economics at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), Sarah Kups (Economist at the Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs of the OECD) and Anne Lauringson (Labour Market Economist of the same Directorate of the OECD). Participants represented academic institutions as well as public and private organisations engaged in policy analysis, coming from ten countries (Bg, BiH, Cz, Cr, De, Ee, Hu, Pl, Sk and Si).

The seminar was implemented within the framework of the Youth Employment PartnerSHIP project and co-financed under the EEA Youth Employment Fund and the Norwegian Funds.