008 – Youth employment partnership – evaluation studies in Spain, Hungary, Italy and Poland

How effectively are young people supported on the labour market? Project Youth Employment PartnerSHIP aims to answer this question by evaluating employment initiatives targeting youth in Spain, Hungary, Italy, and Poland. The project aims to evaluate two set of initiatives: outreach activities of Public Employment Services (PES) and job trials/job subsidies to different job contracts offered to youth. The issue of youth unemployment is relevant in all participating countries, although the specific conditions differ. The results of our evaluation studies show that whereas in Italy and Spain the main problem is that young people are often able to secure only temporary employment, in Hungary and Poland, youth from vulnerable backgrounds are often unable to enter the labour market altogether All evaluations studies are carried out using individual-level administrative data (unemployment registers, social security records, etc.), which are available in most European countries. As a part of the project, we published a methodological guide – a practical toolkit for researchers – which focuses in particular on the challenges and the problems that arise when using administrative data in policy evaluations. The evaluation studies will be complemented with RCT (Randomized Control Trials) experiments in Hungary, Poland and Spain. They will assess which interventions have the potential to boost outreach to inactive, unregistered youth. In addition, the project will build capacity in research institutions to implement evaluation studies of employment initiatives by creating a transnational research network on youth employment policies, internships for PhD students and workshops on evaluation methods for researchers from other institutions. It will also promote the use of impact studies among policy-makers. As a result, youth employment policies can become more effective.

Target groups:

• Researchers evaluating public policy with administrative data
• NGOs working with youth
• Policy-makers implementing youth policies
• Young people who would benefit from improved youth policies

9 Project Partners: