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Unemployment and Labour Market Policies: Some Lessons from West Germany
Author(s) -
Hallett Graham
Publication year - 1985
Publication title -
social policy and administration
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.972
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 1467-9515
pISSN - 0144-5596
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9515.1985.tb00233.x
Subject(s) - unemployment , german , full employment , government (linguistics) , economics , inflation (cosmology) , social security , labour economics , german government , vocational education , youth unemployment , job loss , economic growth , market economy , linguistics , philosophy , physics , archaeology , theoretical physics , history
The author points out that West Germany has had low inflation, high industrial efficiency, and good vocational training, but has not escaped rising levels of unemployment. After an analysis of employment trends in Germany since 1945 there is a review of varying government policies in public expenditure and in dealing with unemployment. The author relates demographic trends to employment patterns, and refers to such phenomena as the “dormant labour force”, concluding that unemployment will remain high. He reviews the effects of social security benefits and of job creation schemes. He concludes that none of the well‐known remedies for unemployment have proved effective in themselves but that short‐term job creation schemes are very much a “second‐best”. He concludes that industrial efficiency — though essential — is not enough in itself and that conquering inflation or providing youth training are shown by the German example to be only a partial help and not a solution to improving employment prospects.