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Policy Network:
The skills mismatch

17 June 2014

For the market to maintain the flexibility that is needed, the matching of workers to jobs should be as efficient as possible. Government, business and the education sector need to do more to make this happen. It is facile to contend that, with the unemployment rate falling rapidly, the labour market is functioning well - in some respects it is, but in others it is not. For the market to maintain the flexibility that is needed, the matching of workers to jobs should be as efficient as possible. While long term unemployment rates remain high, this will not happen. There is work for government, business and the education sector to do to bring these rates down. Just as in the 1980s - when Richard Layard and others argued in favour of helping the long term unemployed back to work because doing so would not add to inflationary pressure - helping these workers now is an imperative.

This article was published online by Policy Network on June 17, 2014
Link to article here

Related publications
Tackling Unemployment: Europe's Successes and Failures, Richard Jackman, Richard Layard and Stephen Nickell. Article in CentrePiece Volume 10, Issue 1, Spring 2005
Unemployment: Macroeconomic Performance and the Labour Market by Richard Layard, Stephen Nickell and Richard Jackman is published by Oxford University Press (second edition, 2005; first edition, 1991).
Book details here

Related links
Richard Layard webpage
Labour Market Programme webpage

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