Labour market performance and migration flows - European ...

Chapter IFinal Reportto reform the financing of maternity leave benefits. At the moment, maternity leave benefits arefinanced by employers. This makes women more expensive to hire and discourages employers fromhiring them, or means that employers offer women lower wages in order to recoup the cost ofmaternity benefits. MoL intends to design a centrally-financed system of maternity leave benefits tofacilitate the entry of Jordanian women into the labour market.In Tunisia, the Ministry for Employment is in the last stage of the definition of a new EmploymentStrategy aiming at restructuring national active labour market policies and focusing on youthemployment. The National Consultative Commission on Employment has also stressed the problem ofthe quality of training and skills of graduate workers, in particular, which explains, in part, theunfulfilled demand for certain categories of employment and the gap between the formal qualificationof the unemployed and their actual skills.Of course, it is far too early to assess the effectiveness of these new policies, but the very fact thatemployment policies are being reviewed and revamped in this fashion is in itself a positive sign.3.3 Alternative Strategies and Policy Options for Managing Labour Markets MismatchesThere seems to be a quite a wide consensus on the policies to implement. Recent reports on labour,employment and migration in the Middle East and North Africa region are convergent (see, forinstance, World Bank 2009a, Middle East Youth Initiative 2009, but also Section 4.4. or 4.5 ofNational Background Papers). The following are mentioned in all the reports: improvement in theeducation system (to bring transmitted skills closer to labour market needs); strengthening ofvocational and technical training; support to SMEs; stimulating labour-intensive activities; incentivesto private sector firms to hire new graduates and women and also in training for workers through taxrebates; the introduction of unemployment insurance schemes; and the restructuring and extension ofsocial protection schemes.Integration of policies is the keyword here. The national strategies to enhance creation of goodquality jobs require integrating and coordinating public policies in four areas: macroeconomic andinvestment promotion policies; education and training policies; social protection policies; and labourregulation policies. This coordination should take on an institutional shape, i.e. formal exchange andconsultation between the respective competent Ministries at the national level.There is ample scope for innovation, however, in the policy monitoring and evaluation field.Extensive employment policy assessments should be carried out in every country to begin with, andmonitoring and evaluation capacities be substantially strengthened. In this field very little has beendone so far in terms of technical assistance for the design, implementation and monitoring of trainingand employment policies, let alone migration policies. In any case, the contrast with training,assistance and aid ear-marked over the last few years for improving policy-making andimplementation in the macroeconomic, financial or trade fields is obvious. In Chapter 7 we advancesome concrete proposals along these lines.On the other hand, the scope for regional co-operation is great. Common objectives and policymakingframework, with a region-wide system of multilateral progress monitoring by each partner,could provide the right incentives to share experiences and best practices, adopt effective policies andfollow-up implementation with a technical perspective.The European experience has shown that in order to fight unemployment efficiently, active anddirect employment policies and joint strategies are necessary on a European level, along with growthpolicies and structural reform. There is no reason why this logic should not be applicable to AMCs,which share with European countries a similar labour market institutional structure, as described inSection 2.2.55