Hurley, John

Economic disparities have been decreasing between EU member states over the past decade, but at the same time inequality has been growing within member states. Despite national level convergence, the gap in wealth and income between the rich and the poor is growing in most of Europe. Some of this rise has been attributed to increasing returns to education pushing earnings up faster for those in jobs requiring higher levels of education – while wages stagnate for the rest.

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.

Eurofound’s European Restructuring Monitor (ERM) is a unique EU-wide dataset on larger-scale restructuring events, which monitors the announced employment effects of restructuring in the EU28 and Norway. Using reports from selected media titles, the ERM is updated on a daily basis. This report gives an overview of key trends in restructuring in 2018, detailing the companies and sectors and European regions that experienced the greatest job losses and job gains.

A living wage has been defined as a measure of income that allows an employee a basic but socially acceptable standard of living. In recent decades, living wage initiatives have emerged in a small number of mainly English-speaking countries, including the UK and Ireland. These initiatives have developed in response to the inadequacy of income for many working households reliant on existing statutory minimum wage rates.

Using data from the sixth European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS), carried out in 2015, the ERM report 2018 examines how workplace factors may influence the relationship between restructuring (with job losses) and the outcomes for employees. It also reviews policy and academic research on good practice in restructuring.

This overview report summarises the findings of five case studies on the likely impact of game changing technologies on production and employment in the manufacturing sector in Europe up to 2025: advanced industrial robotics; industrial internet of things; additive manufacturing; electric vehicles; and industrial biotechnology.

Rising levels of employment in manufacturing in the EU since 2013 have seen the part reversal of a long-term decline in employment in this sector. Data from the European Restructuring Monitor (ERM) database to early September 2017 show that, for the first time since 2005, the number of new manufacturing jobs announced in national media (91,740) outstripped the number of announced job losses (46,478).

The EU has finally recovered all the net employment losses sustained since the global financial crisis. It has been a long and painful process. But there is at last growing evidence of positive momentum in EU labour markets, if not quite ‘animal spirits’. Many of those member states most affected by the global downturn have recorded significant employment growth in the last three years – including Spain (+9%), Ireland (+8%) and Greece (+5%).

Labour market slack is the shortfall between the volume of work desired by workers and the actual volume of work available. The most important indicator of labour slack is the unemployment rate, but an exclusive focus on this fails to take account of the four-fifths of the jobless population who are inactive rather than unemployed.

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.