Active labor market policies for workers with difficult job placement experiences: an impact evaluation

Abstract

In this paper, an impact assessment exercise of an active labour market policy aimed at hard-to-place unemployed is conducted. These are the so-called local employment initiatives and in particular, two measures developed in Andalusia during the years 2016-2018: the Emple@Joven and Emple@30+ programs. Using matching methods, it is found that the Emple@Joven program, aimed at unemployed people under the age of 30, did not increase the employment levels for the beneficiaries of the program and that the Emple@30+ program, aimed at unemployed people over the age of 30, only significantly helped the unemployed people without working experience or those who had been out of the labour market for more than 24 months. Therefore, apparently, these measures that provided a working experience between 3 and 6 months, only seemed to be effective for very specific groups with special difficulty in accessing the labour market on their own. These results, thus, point to the need of a better ex-ante profiling of active employment policies’ recipients, offering them only to those who are expected to gain the most in terms of their level of employability, offering them a better and more stable insertion in the labour market.

Keywords:

active employment policy evaluation, local employment initiatives, propensity score matching

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