Chronic Unemployment: A New Concept for Capturing Weak Labor Market Attachment
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18291/njwls.158790Keywords:
Employment, Wages, Unemployment & Rehabilitation, Labor Market Institutions & Social PartnersAbstract
In this article, we develop, unfold, and explore the concept of ‘chronic unemployment’ to capture a segment that is weakly attached to the labor market because of repeated spells of unemployment, interrupted only by shorter intervals of temporary employment, inactivity, and/or participation in active labor market policy measures (ALMP). We do this to capture this segment more adequately than conventional long-term unemployment statistics. We analyze unemployment trajectories of chronically unemployed individuals across different labor market and welfare regimes over more than 10 years based on longitudinal and comparable register data in Denmark, Germany, and Finland. We find that in these developed welfare states, unemployment of a more chronic character is a much wider problem than what conventional statistics reveal, and that sustainable integration into gainful employment at the open labor market is a distant goal for a considerable share of the group.
Author Biographies
Simo Aho, Tampere University
Senior researcher, Work Research Centre
Magnus Jespersen, Aalborg University
Research Assistant, Department of Politics and Society
Regina Konle-Seidl, Migration and International Labour Studies
Senior Researcher, Institute for Employment Research (IAB)
Rasmus Lind Ravn, Aalborg University
Associate Professor, Department of Politics and Society
Stine Rasmussen, Aalborg University
Associate Professor, Department of Politics and Society. E-mail:sra@dps.aau.dk
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