European Association of Labour Economist Conference

The 33rd Annual Conference of the European Association of Labour Economists (EALE) was held online on September 16-18, 2021.

The event was jointly organized by the University of Padova and University of Bologna. Mateusz Smoter, a researcher from IBS, presented the findings of the working paper "What works for whom? Youth labour market policy in Poland", prepared as a part of the Youth Employment PartnerSHIP project (click to read the article). The paper compared the relative effectiveness of selected Active Labour Market Policies available to young unemployed people in Poland in the years 2015-2016.

Mateusz pointed out that NEETs who received on-the-job training vouchers were 6 p.p. less likely to return to unemployment than those who benefited from the standard on-the-job training. Although this gap narrows over time, it remains significant even after three years. This effect holds true for all subgroups of participants. On the other hand, the difference between classroom training and classroom training vouchers are not statistically significant and this result applies to all subgroups of unemployed individuals. Public works turned out to be the least effective Active Labor Market Policy. The negative gap in the successful outcomes between public works and other ALMP reaches even 15 p.p. after 18 months of the intervention!

The question of why is it so remains mostly unanswered. However, there is no doubt that the finding of the working paper would be useful for the unemployed, labour offices, and policymakers. It seems that participants who now benefit from on-the-job training or public works should be relocated to different programmes.