Employment performance in the Member States

The first Employment Rates Report, requested by the European Council at the Luxembourg meeting at the end of 1997, was published by the European Commission in October 1998. The analysis on which the report is based was carried out by Alphametrics economists working closely with Commission officials. The report examines a number of issues affecting the level of employment across the EU, including:

• growth of GDP
• development of service sectors
• growth of part-time working
• availability of child care facilities for women wanting to pursue working careers
• education and training system
• interaction of taxation and social security systems
• labour market regulations

The report puts forward a number of policy proposals for raising the number of jobs which Union economies are able to provide for their citizens and contains a range of statistical data prepared by Alphametrics to be as comparable as possible between Member States. The indicators developed here are now being used as a benchmark for the development of the employment performance indicators that form the cornerstone of the new European monitoring strategy.

The Report can be downloaded in PDF format from the DG-V website