Brussels, 06/11/2006 (Agence Europe) - Despite a slowdown in economic growth, the employment situation in the European Union is quite healthy thanks to greater participation from women and elderly workers (55-64), particularly men. But, according to comments made by Commissioner Vladimír Špidla, Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities on Monday in the 'Employment in EUROPE 2006' report, there remains a lot to be done to catch up with the USA. Although unemployment in the EU fell by almost half a percentage point (to 8.7% from 9.1% in the previous year) while employment growth almost doubled to 0.9%, the Union continues to under-perform both in terms of employment and productivity growth in relation its target (the overall employment rate target of 70%) and has to redouble efforts to achieve its reforms.
Since 2000, the employment rate for women has risen by around 5 percentage points or more in Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia and Italy, and has increased by almost 10 percentage points in Spain. For older workers, sixteen Member States have achieved increases of 5 percentage points or more, with especially strong rises (over 10 percentage points) in Finland, Hungary and Latvia. The Commission is pleased that these positive results for older workers are thanks to active ageing policies and reforms in pensions systems. The Commission points out, however, that progress has not been uniform across the Member States. Strong differences persist in labour market outcomes, in particular between men and women, between EU nationals and non-EU nationals, and between regions. For example, female employment rates across the EU ranged from over 70% in Denmark and Sweden to about 34% in Malta. Regional employment rates across the EU ranged from just over 40% in some regions in Italy to almost 80% in areas in the UK. Commissioner Špidla pointed out that reforms should be directed towards flexicurity, a new concept that locates the labour market of the future between company flexibility as demanded by globalisation and security in social and economic issues as set out by the European social model. Successes observed in Denmark, Spain, Finland, Austria and the Netherlands demonstrate that flexibility and security are compatible and mutually strengthen each other. The report also illustrates how pro-active labour market policies are essential for achieving a good combination of flexibility and employment security. It highlighted the differences in spending by Member States on activating those looking for work. This ranged from under a ¼% of GDP in the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Slovakia and the UK, to 1.5% of GDP in Denmark. The Commission is calling for a stronger evaluation culture - highlighting that success is not only about how much we invest but also how effectively we invest in areas like vocational training and Public Employment Services - is needed. The Commissioner also underlined the importance of life long learning requiring costly but indispensable investments to increase the rate of employment. The Commissioner deplored the fact that such a pro-active policy in this field is not, unfortunately, sufficiently encouraged. There has been strong growth in the number of high-skilled jobs in the EU since 2000, yet the EU has still a considerably lower proportion of high-skilled workers in its total workforce than the US. The EU only allocates about 1.2% of its GDP to higher education, this is less than half of the comparable figure for the United States. The report points out that well-educated and adaptable workers are vital to achieving higher productivity growth through technological progress. Workers' geographic mobility is also underlined as an important means of coping with today's labour market challenges but Europe lacks positive results in this area. There has been little development over the last 30 years with less than 2% of EU working age citizens living in another Member State, efforts to create a genuine culture of mobility need to be stepped up. Efforts should focus not only on removing administrative and legal mobility barriers, but also on reducing social, cultural, educational and infrastructural obstacles. Full report online see: http: //ec.europa.eu/employment_social/news/2006/nov/employment_europe_en.pdf.
Europeans are optimistic overall about Union's contribution to employment and social affairs sector
According to a Eurobarometer investigation, published at the same time as the employment report, Europeans are positive about the Union's contribution to the employment and social affairs sector. Three quarters of them believe that it plays a positive role in access to education and training, job creation and the fight against unemployment. 84% are confident about keeping their current job in the short-term but a similar proportion believes a 'job for life' is a thing of the past. Most of those polled still feel that regular training and the ability to adapt to new tasks is important, and many are aware of the aid provided by the European Social fund to workers wanting to boost their skills and employment perspectives. The poll revealed that seven out of ten Europeans believe job contracts should be more flexible to encourage job creation; more than half feel relatively certain about finding a new job if they were to be made redundant, the most optimistic being the Danes (the Commission points out that Denmark is the EU Member State which has been most successful in combining flexibility and security, 'flexicurity'); 88% believe regular training improves their job prospects; 56% believe the EU plays a positive role in employment and social affairs. Most Europeans approve EU-inspired measures like training at the workplace (87%) and increasing childcare facilities (82%), seeing this as effective in getting more people into work and staying at work longer. The Eurobarometer survey can be accessed at: http: //ec.europa.eu/employment_social/news/2006/nov/euro_baro_report_en.pdf (il)