Good news. The European Union finally decided to take action, before the long-term jobless reach the age of having to apply for retirement than for a job. Even though in real life, anyone over 35 is not exactly a catch for head-hunters and employers.
After the EU commissioners, officials and assistants gathered the data of unemployment, they were shocked to read the findings: 12 million people living within the Union boundaries are without a job for longer than one year.
And this “despite the economic recovery and signs of improvements in the EU labor market,” as we read in the official statement of the EU Commission for Employment, Social Affairs, Skills and Labour Mobility. The numbers of long-term unemployed “doubled between 2007 and 2014, accounting for about half of the total number of unemployed.
EU Commissioner Marianne Thyssen realized that Junkcer’s “Investment Plan for Europe has the potential to create millions of new jobs. But even when new jobs are created it is often very difficult for long-term unemployed to successfully re-enter the job market.”
And she developed a 3 Steps Plan that consists of groundbreaking changes in the labor market like “registration of job-seekers”, “identification of their needs” and a “job integration agreement” with private mentoring and other nice things like further education and training.
Three steps towards re-entering the job market
The proposal puts forward three key steps:
- Encourage the registration of long-term unemployed with an employment service;
- Provide each registered long-term unemployed with an individual in-depth assessment to identify their needs and potential at the latest at 18 months of unemployment;
- Offer a job integration agreement to all registered long-term unemployed at the latest at 18 months.
The job integration agreement should consist of a tailor-made plan to bring the long-term unemployed back to work. It can include, depending on the existing services in each Member State:
- mentoring,
- help with the job search,
- further education and training,
- support for housing, transport, child and care services or rehabilitation.
The proposal also calls for the active involvement of employers through partnerships with the public authorities, enhancing the range of services they can receive, as well as offering them targeted financial incentives
