Labour Market

The labour market is where employers look for able employees and where employees look for suitable vacancies. As in every market, supply and demand regulate themselves to a certain degree via prices. Nevertheless, as a special type of market the labour market is subject to major restrictions such as the following:

• Workers are not as easy to describe in terms of their nature and quantity as products or services in other markets.
• For the majority of people, their wage or salary is by far the most important type of income. This reduces the flexibility with which prices can be set on the market, particularly the lower limits.
• The production of goods can be more easily transferred to other countries and continents than the workforce.
• The mobility of employees is frequently affected by social and also political conflicts, particularly in the host countries.
• There is no complete transparency with regard to working conditions and to the professional and social skills of those seeking employment.
• Alternatives are difficult to assess: for a company, the benefits of a change of location are just as hard to evaluate as a change of jobs is for the employee.
• More so than other markets, the labour market is characterised by unequal access to information about events on the market and the unequal power of the participants.

The significance of labour market policy

For these reasons, and to a greater degree than other areas of the economy and society, the labour market cannot function without intervention on the part of the state.
This occurs in the following ways:

• Through employment law and
• labour market policy: this refers to all of the public measures which are designed to balance the supply and demand for workers to as great an extent as possible and in an economically meaningful and sustainable way. These measures include: statutory unemployment insurance; financial support for market participants to increase their occupational and regional mobility; the creation of the greatest possible level of transparency on the labour market by means of free information (finding jobs for the unemployed).

Labour market policy and the European Union

For the Member States of the European Union, the EU's resolutions and programmes represent the most important orientation for national labour market policy. Austrian labour market policy is orientated towards the European Employment Strategy (EES) and the requirements of the European Social Fund (ESF)

At the 2000 European Council in Lisbon, the heads of state or government agreed to make the EU by 2010 into "the most competitive and dynamic economic area in the world - an economic area which is capable of achieving sustained economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion." (Lisbon Strategy)

In 2005, the Commission adopted new ‘integrated guidelines'. The Member States then drew up national reform programmes for the period 2005-2008 on the basis of these guidelines.

The equality of women and men

In labour market policy - in addition to specific measures to support women - the equality of women and men is taken into consideration as an across-the-board objective in all areas of politics and in all activities via the strategy of Gender Mainstreaming.