Workforce Heterogeneity and Unemployment Benefits: the Need for Policy Reassessment in the European Union

Abstract

Unemployment benefit systems fail to take into account the increasing heterogeneity of both employment and unemployment. For many of the member states of the European Union, recent policies to reduce public expen ditures have fallen back on conventional no tions of work and participation, regardless of the expansion in the proportion of non-con ventional employment, such as the greater shares of part-time and temporary work, and the increasing participation of women. This means that governments are providing weaker protection against the costs of unemployment for those groups, particularly women and young people, who do not fit the full-time continuous labour market participant model, despite the acceptance of the principle of equal opportunity and the active promotion of flexi ble labour markets with heterogeneous jobs and heterogeneous workers. In this article, we consider the uneven impact of systems of un employment insurance on men's and women's independent access to unemployment benefits across the EU. The example of gender is in sightful given the concentration of women among 'atypical' forms of employment and also highlights the influence of patterns of household organization. Eligibility conditions based on continuous employment history and minimum weekly hours or earnings thresholds exacerbate women's unequal access to ben efits, given their overrepresentation in low- paid, precarious or aytpical employment. We also assess the principles governing the calcu lation of the level and duration of income compensation for the unemployed, taking into account differences in men's and women's earnings as well as differences in access to benefits.