What can we learn from impact evaluations of labour market programmes supporting young people?

25/06/2021

Judit Krekó has recently presented the lessons from the impact assessments of youth employment measures at two international conferences.

Judit Krekó, senior researcher at BI, in her presentation at the online "Conference of the Czech Evaluation Society (ČES) 2021 - Approach to People and Data" reviewed the main decision points in choosing a credible estimation procedure and using administrative databases for evaluating labour market instruments targeting young people. The main methodological and practical issues of the impact assessments of youth labour market programmes with administrative data are based on the research conducted within the international Youth Employment PartnerSHIP (YEP) project and on the related methodological guide and study.

At the "Counterfactual Methods for Policy Impact Evaluation 2021" (COMPIE 2021) online conference, held on 23-25 June 2021, in her presentation entitled „Can a short-term job trial programme kick-start young jobseekers’ career?”, Judit Krekó presented the results of this impact assessment. She highlighted that this labour market instrument can improve the likelihood of finding employment, opposed to other labour market measures, such as public work programmes. However, the programme was less successful in attracting youth with lower education levels and worse employment history. At the same time, our estimates show that job trial  programme improves the job prospects of young jobseekers with elementary education level as much as of those  with at least a secondary education. Giving young unemployed people with less education a higher priority in the job trial would not decrease the average impact, while reducing the deadweight loss of the programme, so more emphasis needs to be placed on involving disadvantaged young people.

The YEP project studying the effectiveness of active labour market instruments in Hungary, Poland, Italy and Spain is supported through the EEA and Norway Grants Fund for Youth Employment.