Job Creation and the Quality of Working Life: a preliminary study from six Member States

During the 1990s the European Union has experienced an increase both in the number of long term unemployed and, in most Member States, the proportion of unemployed people who have been without work for longer than a year. A high proportion of Member States' expenditure is spent on trying to get the long term unemployed reintegrated into the formal labour market. This short study sets out to examine the question 'Is quality of work an important factor in explaining the success of job creation schemes?" It is an exploratory study based on case studies carried out in Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK.