Employment and unemployment

Within the area of employment and unemployment AKF researches in e.g.:

• Conditions at the individual level which is of importance to employment opportunities and unemployment risk
• The public efforts in the field of employment, including the efforts towards unemployed people getting unemployment insurance and unemployed people getting cash benefits.

AKF's research into this field is especially relevant for the decision-makers and practitioners in the employment area.

Are the resources in the employment efforts utilised in an appropriate way?

Considerable resources are used on activation etc. in the efforts towards the unemployed. It is important to examine to which degree these resources are used in an appropriate way. Therefore, AKF estimates the effects of different measures of the chances of getting employment.

How do different forms of activation work in relation to different people?

In AKF's research we also look at whether different forms of activation have especially positive effects on certain groups of unemployed. This is of importance in order to make an appropriate selection of unemployed with different characteristics in relation to different activity offers.

The course of contact between the client and the system

The whole course of contact between the client and the system influences the probability of being working again. This is also a subject of AKF's research. Qualitative investigations play a central role in relation to understanding how the activation works and they are used in order to examine the coherence between the case workers' professional approach and prioritisation, the activation effort and the desired and undesired effects of the effort towards the unemployed.

The reasons for unemployment

To mobilise people who have been unemployed for a long time it is necessary to understand the reasons for being unemployed. The processes which can lead to marginalisation might for instance be connected with lack of education or poor economic incentives. Therefore, a central point in AKF's research is also the connection between unemployment and health.