The Employment package (launched April 2012) is a set of policy documents looking into how EU employment policies intersect with a number of other policy areas in support of smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. It identifies the EU's biggest job potential areas and the most effective ways for EU countries to create more jobs. Measures are proposed in the following areas:
Supporting job creation
- Stepping up job creation across the economy by:
- encouraging labour demand
- targeting hiring subsidies to new hiring
- reducing the tax on labour while ensuring fiscal sustainability
- promoting and supporting self employment, social enterprises and business start-ups
- transforming informal or undeclared work into regular employment
- boosting 'take home' pay
- modernising wage-setting systems to align wages with productivity developments
- fostering job creation (Key areas: comparing EU countries' performances)
- investing in personal and household services
- Harnessing the potential of job-rich sectors: ICT, green economy (analysis), healthcare
- Mobilising EU funds for job creation: European Social Fund
Restoring the dynamics of labour markets
- Reforming labour markets by:
- encouraging companies' internal flexibility to protect jobs in crisis times
- encouraging decent and sustainable wages
- making job transitions pay
- reducing the labour market segmentation between those in precarious employment and those on more stable employment
- anticipating economic restructuring
- developing lifelong learning and active labour market policies
- delivering youth opportunities and the youth employment package (see also youth unemployment analysis and youth action teams)
- reinforcing social dialogue
- reinforcing public employment services (see also analysis of public employment services)
- Investing in skills by:
- coping with skills mismatches
- ensuring better recognition of skills and qualifications and anticipating skills needs (EU Skills Panorama)
- improving synergy between the worlds of education and work
- Moving towards a European labour market by:
- removing legal and practical obstacles to the free movement of workers
- enhancing the matching of jobs and job-seekers across borders (EURES)
Improving EU Governance
- Reinforcing coordination and multilateral surveillance in employment policy by:
- publishing a benchmarking system with selected employment indicators together with the draft Joint employment report
- developing a reform tracking device to keep track of progress implementing national reform programmes
- Effectively involving the social partners in the European semester exercise by setting up an EU tripartite format for monitoring and exchanging views on wage developments
- Strengthening the link between employment policies and relevant financial instruments. Partnership contracts and operational programmes should be prepared in the light of the priorities of the national reform programmes and national job plans, and revised taking into account the country specific recommendation (see also Blueprint on the future of the EMU)
