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This paper proposes a novel method for identifying and visualising key employment obstacles that may prevent individuals from participating fully in the labour market. The approach is intended to complement existing sources of information that governments use when designing and implementing activation and employment-support policies. In particular, it aims to provide individual and household perspectives on employment problems, which may be missed when relying on common labour-force statistics or on administrative data, but which are relevant for targeting and tailoring support programmes and related policy interventions. A first step describes a series of employment-barrier indicators at the micro level, comprising three domains: work-related capabilities, financial incentives and employment opportunities. For each domain, a selected set of concrete employment barriers are quantified using the EU-SILC multi-purpose household survey. In a second step, a statistical clustering method (latent class analysis), is used to establish profiles and patterns of employment barriers among individuals with no or weak labour-market attachment. A detailed illustration for two countries (Estonia and Spain) shows that “short-hand” groupings that are often highlighted in the policy debate, such as “youth” or “older workers”, are in fact composed of multiple distinct sub-groups that face very different combinations of employment barriers and likely require different policy approaches. Results also indicate that individuals typically face two or more simultaneous employment obstacles suggesting that addressing one barrier at a time may not have the intended effect on employment levels. From a policy perspective, the results support calls for carefully sequencing activation and employment support measures, and for coordinating them across policy domains and institutions.

Employment --- Social Issues/Migration/Health

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The surge in energy and food prices, which was amplified by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has prompted a flurry of policy responses by countries during 2022. The aim of these policy responses was to mitigate social and economic impact of higher prices. In this paper we document announcements of policy measures based on the Database of Energy and Food Price Actions (DEFPA), which was developed based on two rounds of survey responses of IMF country teams conducted in March/April and June/July of 2022. The paper also provides discussion on policy trade-offs when considering appropriate policy responses both for countries with strong and weak social safety nets. Key policy message is that providing targeted support to households in the form of cash transfers is the most cost-effective way of alleviating the burden on vulnerable households and have to be preferred over broad-based mechanisms that prevent international prices to pass through to domestic consumers.

Macroeconomics --- Economics: General --- Taxation and Subsidies: Externalities --- Redistributive Effects --- Environmental Taxes and Subsidies --- Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents: Household --- Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents: Firm --- Price Level --- Inflation --- Deflation --- Energy: Demand and Supply --- Prices --- Agriculture: Aggregate Supply and Demand Analysis --- Economic & financial crises & disasters --- Economics of specific sectors --- Energy prices --- Food prices --- Currency crises --- Informal sector --- Economics --- France