Employability

Employability is a concept referring to terms used to assess the capability of a person to gain a job.

This concept is set out as one of the four pillars of the European Employment Strategy, first adopted by the Member States in 1997. It aims to prevent long-term unemployment and to facilitate access to the labour market, including employment guidelines aimed at developing training and skills, combating age barriers and reviewing tax and benefit systems. The first guideline of 1998 set a target that every unemployed person is offered a new start before reaching one year of unemployment (or in the case of young persons, six months). This new start could take the form of training, retraining, work practice, a job or other employability measure (adopted in a Council Resolution of 15 December 1997). Other 1998 employability guidelines included training for at least 20% of unemployed people, more apprenticeships and the promotion of lifelong learning. The 1999 guidelines included a review of the tax and benefit system to provide incentives for unemployed and inactive people to enhance their employability (Council Resolution of 22 February 1999).

In an evaluation, in 2002, of the employability resolution, the Commission recognised that more needed to be done for disadvantaged groups such as disabled persons, ethnic minorities and immigrants. It pointed to increasing gaps between beneficiaries of education and training measures, with a widening gap in access to training between those with low skills and those with higher education.

In the Lisbon Strategy 2000–2010 and the Europe 2020 strategy for more growth and jobs, higher employability is seen as a precondition to achieve the targets for an increased employment rate, whereby ‘employability’ is translated into:

improving and adapting general and vocational training to new conditions and forms of work;
the implementation of lifelong learning principles;
the definition of specific targets for educational levels.

The Europe 2020 strategy, for instance, aims to increase the share of the population aged 30–34 years having completed tertiary education from 31% to at least 40% by 2020. In order to tackle the problem of early school leavers, the drop-out rate should be reduced from 15% to 10% by 2020.