Upward convergence in employment and socioeconomic factors

Upward convergence is a process whereby the performance of EU Member States in a given domain or range of domains is seen to improve while gaps between Member States reduce. Achieving upward convergence is of crucial importance to the EU, as the increase of disparities among Member States threatens the cohesion of the Union by counteracting citizens’ expectations that EU membership will improve working and living conditions. This report investigates recent socioeconomic and employment trends across Member States and offers possible policy measures to assist in avoiding future divergence. The analysis is based on a set of 21 indicators; most of them are headline indicators on the Social Scoreboard of the European Pillar of Social Rights. The findings reveal that, despite the negative effect of the 2008 economic crisis, upward convergence trends have been restored in most of the indicators examined.