European Jobs Monitor

Accumulating evidence indicates that large metropolitan centres are faring much better than other regions within the Member States of the EU. Such interregional inequality contributes to disenchantment with existing political systems, which in turn can weaken the social bonds that ground democratic systems. This is the context for the 2019 edition of the European Jobs Monitor, which analyses shifts in the employment structure – meaning change in the distribution of employment across occupations and sectors – of the EU regions.

In 2016, somewhat later than in other developed economies, the EU recovered all the net employment losses sustained since the global financial crisis. Employment growth since 2013 has been only modestly skewed towards well-paid jobs; growth has been robust in low-paid and mid-paid jobs too. Newer jobs are increasingly likely to be full time rather than part time. Part 1 of this sixth annual European Jobs Monitor report takes a detailed look at shifts in employment at Member State and EU levels from 2011 Q2 to 2016 Q2. Part 2 examines the role that occupations play in structuring European wage inequality.

The European Jobs Monitor 2016 looks at 2011 Q2–2015 Q2 employment shifts at Member State and aggregate EU level. A ‘jobs-based’ approach is used to describe employment shifts quantitatively (how many jobs were created or destroyed) and qualitatively (what kinds of jobs). It also introduces a new set of indicators on the task content, methods and tools used at work.

Europe has begun to emerge from the prolonged slump caused by the global financial crisis in 2008 and exacerbated by the euro zone single-currency crisis in 2010–2011. In the last year, aggregate employment levels have risen faster than at any time since 2008. This, the fourth annual European Jobs Monitor report, looks in detail at shifts in the employment structure at Member State and aggregate EU level over 2011–2014. The objective is to assess the extent to which recent shifts are polarising, arising from a decline in mid-paid jobs, or upgrading as a result of growth in high-paid jobs.

This report looks in detail at recent shifts in the employment structure at Member State and EU level, examining the main sectors and occupations that have contributed to job loss and job growth. It finds, for example, that in 2011–2013, the majority of net employment losses continued to occur in middle-paid and low-to-middle-paid jobs in construction and manufacturing. Employment growth remained resilient in high-paid, high-skilled jobs, and knowledge-intensive services have been the main source of this growth. The report also examines some of the likely drivers behind the changing employment structure: technological change, globalisation and labour market institutions.

This report describes recent structural shifts in employment in European labour markets before, during and after the 2008–2009 recession. It finds that employment destruction across Europe in the recession was strongly polarising in terms of the wage structure, while there was less polarisation in 2010–2012. A jobs based approach identifies how net employment shifts at Member State and EU level have been distributed across jobs in different quintiles of the wage distribution.