Research project PE/SS/08 (Research action PE)
Long-term unemployment, of which Belgium has the highest rate of all the OECD countries, contributes preponderantly to the deficit of the "unemployment" branch of the social security system.
Theorists in labour economics have shown that long-term unemployment reduces the efficiency with which the unemployed person seeks work.
Various programmes have been established to remedy this situation.
The objective of the present research is to enlighten public decision-makers in their attempts to reduce long-term unemployment and thereby improve the financial balance of the social security system, ultimately by proposing measures aimed at improving the effectiveness of resorption programmes and employment offices and by energizing the job-hunting process.
To reach these goals, we shall follow three lines :
- describing the factors that determine the professional reinsertion rate of the long-term unemployed; through an analysis based on econometric and data processing tools and a cost-benefits analysis;
- examining the causes of these professional reinsertion rates, by analysing both the work offered to and the work sought by the long-term unemployed. The tools here are principally those of labour econometrics applied to the regional level and statistics (panel studies);
- synthesising the information gained with a view to making economic policy proposals.
