OECD Employment Outlook 2020
Worker Security and the COVID-19 Crisis
The 2020 edition of the OECD Employment Outlook focuses on worker security and the COVID-19 crisis. Chapter 1 provides an initial assessment of the labour market consequences of the COVID-19 outbreak and the resulting economic crisis. It also presents an overview of the emergency labour market and social policy measures implemented by OECD countries and discusses directions for further policy adaptation as countries move out of lockdown. Chapter 2 investigates the uneven access to unemployment benefits for workers in part-time and less stable jobs, which often accentuates the hardship they face in times of crisis, and discusses the difficult balance between work incentives and income security. Chapter 3 provides a comparative review of employment protection legislation (EPL) across OECD countries by developing a new version of the OECD's EPL indicators, which now include an improved assessment of regulations for collective redundancies, unfair dismissals and enforcement issues. Chapter 4 takes a fresh look at job polarisation, and in particular the hollowing out of jobs in middle-skill occupations. Finally, Chapter 5 examines the changing labour market outcomes for middle-educated vocational education and training graduates, whose labour market perspectives are challenged by the contraction of jobs in middle-skill occupations.
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Unemployment benefits and non‑standard dependent employment: Striking the balance between income security and work incentives
This chapter provides an in-depth discussion of the income security and work incentives provided by unemployment benefits to jobseekers with previous periods of part-time and unstable dependent employment. It sheds light on the accessibility and adequacy of this key social protection tool, and on the work incentives affecting different types of workers, two key factors for its design and implementation. In particular, the chapter compares entitlements to unemployment benefits for workers with a range of typical employment trajectories, including alternating spells of dependent employment and unemployment. Issues, such as the extension of out‑of‑work support to individuals in “part-time” or “partial” unemployment, options for accumulating entitlement rights across different spells of employment, saving “unused” benefit entitlements for future out‑of‑work spells, and strategies for integrating in-work and out-of-work support, are all assessed.
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