Page 83 - Työpoliittinen aikakauskirja 2 2018

Työpoliittinen aikakauskirja 2/2018
English Summaries
The evaluation of active labour market programmes
Juha Tuomala, Lic.Soc.Sc., Senior Researcher, VATT Institute for economic Research
The study presented aims to evaluate the tar- geting of labour market services and acti- vation pro-grammes for the various groups of
unemployed and evaluate the impact of partic- ipation of later em-ployment. In the absence of randomized experiments we rely on non-exper- imental data. This article particularly focuses on the effects of subsidized employment both in private and public sector. The analysis is based on extensive register data set covering years 2001–2014. The data was gathered from the reg- isters and statistics of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment and Statistics Finland. The resulting data contain information on individual demographic and socio-economic characteristics as well as detailed informa- tion on unemployment spells and partici- pation in labour market pro-grammes. We focused on unemployed whose unemployment spells started in 2010. We explore the long-run employment effects of subsidized employment
and other labour market programmes started at different stages of the unemployment spell by utilizing matching methods. Later employ- ment in various participant and matched con- trol groups was compared. Evaluations based on the conditional independence assumption pro- duced estimates according to which subsidized employment in the pub-lic sector usually has no impact on later employment. However, the results were somewhat more positive for long- term unemployed. On the other hand, subsi- dized jobs in private businesses enhanced later employment. However, our estimations imply that the “selection on unobservables” may bias results. The least employable groups participate often in measures that only seldom help them to find a job at the open labour market. Those who already had better chances in the labour market partici-pated often in programmes with the best probability of later employment.
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