A decade ago, OECD countries adopted the Jobs Strategy as a blueprint for reforms to cut high and persistent unemployment. The Jobs Strategy shares many common features with the European Employment Strategy which was first launched in 1997. Since its inception, the OECD Jobs Strategy has played an influential role in the policy debate in member countries. And a Secretariat evaluation in 1999 suggested that those countries that had applied the Jobs Strategy the most had tended to perform relatively well in terms of improved labour market performance ...

The amount of time devoted to paid work is at the nexus of several of the key economic and social challenges facing OECD governments. The potential contribution of working-time flexibility to lowering unemployment has been highlighted by the OECD Jobs Strategy, while recent analyses of the sources of economic growth have highlighted the importance of average hours worked. However, longer and flexible working hours may not be fully compatible policy goals, nor are they an unmixed blessing from the perspective of the well-being of workers and their families. How do working hours vary across OECD countries? What are the links between employment rates for women and other under-represented groups, the incidence of part-time work and total hours worked? Is work-life balance threatened by rising employment rates for parents and a “long-hours culture”? ...

There has been heated policy debate on the costs and benefits of regulations governing dismissals and other features of employment protection. The key issue is how to keep a balance between the need for firms to adapt to ever-changing market conditions on the one hand, and workers’ employment security on the other. Do employment protection regulations have an impact on firms’ hiring and firing decisions and is this impact different across demographic groups? Do such regulations explain the high incidence of temporary work recorded in certain countries? How to instil labour market dynamism while also protecting workers against job and income loss? ...

The OECD Jobs Strategy recommends policies to increase wage flexibility, including moves to decentralise wage bargaining. However, this is one of the policy areas where member governments have shown the greatest reluctance to implement the reforms proposed and disagreements among researchers have been most pronounced. Have wage-setting institutions become more supportive of high employment rates and broadly-shared prosperity? To what extent is the trend towards lower union density and more decentralised collective bargaining a factor behind wage moderation and greater earnings inequality recorded in some OECD countries? Does insufficient wage differentiation limit the employment prospects of youths, women or less educated workers? ...

It is often claimed that upgrading workers’ skills could help meet the challenges of technological and structural change, as well as population ageing. Policies to enhance skills could thus be an important part of the OECD Jobs Strategy. Still, little is known about the labour market impact of adult learning. Do policies that enhance workers’ skills help improve the overall employment situation? To what extent do workers who receive training enjoy better job prospects to the detriment of their non-trained counterparts? Are the effects of training different across demographic groups and what do empirical findings suggest as regards lifelong learning strategies?

“Informal” employment escapes taxation and regulation. Such forms of employment make it difficult to manage social protection; undermine tax collection, implying either high tax rates on those in formal employment or poor-quality government services; involve unfair competition and inefficient production methods; and facilitate illegal migration. To what extent does undeclared work include household production, work helping out friends, work by illegal migrants, undeclared wages, “black market” transactions, tax evasion by the self-employed, and the production of illicit goods? Do high taxes, red tape, poor-quality government services and strict employment regulations exclude workers from formal employment, and how can the transition to a salaried economy be promoted?