This background paper focuses on one important aspect of social protection: unemployment benefits, both first tier (usually contributory) and lower tier (predominantly tax-based, non-contributory and means-tested). Unemployment benefits help to cushion the impact of job loss on household finances an
The European population is living longer than ever before and has had a natural negative change since 2014 outnumbered only by the positive net migration (Eurostat 2023). The age profile of society is rapidly increasing with the number of people older than 50 years growing steadily.
Ensuring greater social protection for self-employed people has been the subject of much policy debate in recent years. In 2019, the Council of the European Union adopted a recommendation on access to social protection for workers and the self-employed. Sudden reductions in income during the COVID-1
In this pilot project, Eurofound successfully established the feasibility of, and piloted, an EU-wide database of minimum pay rates contained in collective agreements related to low-paid workers. A conceptual and measurement framework was devised, a total of 692 collective agreements – related to 24
Eurofound's 2024 work programme is set in the context of the upcoming European elections, war in Ukraine, renewed Middle East conflict and rising cost of living across the EU.
The various economic and social shocks of the past decade and a half – most recently the COVID-19 pandemic – have ongoing consequences for the living standards and prospects of Europeans, and sometimes these outcomes have been uneven across age groups. Social policies – such as those in the areas of
This study provides information allowing for an assessment of the representativeness of the actors involved in the European sectoral social dialogue committee for the furniture sector.
Previous Eurofound research developed three complementary tools to examine the dynamics of industrial relations and compare how national industrial relations systems are faring in terms of quality and change over time.