Reader’s guide
The Local Job Creation project involves a series of country reviews in Australia, Belgium (Flanders), Canada (Ontario and Quebec), Czech Republic, France, Ireland, Israel, Italy (Autonomous Province of Trento), Korea, Poland, Sweden, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States (California and Michigan). The key stages of each review are summarised in Box 1.
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Analyse available data to understand the key labour market challenges facing the country in the context of the economic recovery and apply an OECD LEED diagnostic tool which seeks to assess the balance between the supply and demand for skills at the local level.
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Map the current policy framework for local job creation in the country.
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Apply the local job creation dashboard, developed by the OECD LEED Programme (Froy et al., 2010) to measure the relative strengths and weaknesses of local employment and training agencies to contribute to job creation.
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Distribute an electronic questionnaire to local employment offices to gather information on how they work with other stakeholders to support local job creation policies.
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Conduct an OECD study visit, where local and national roundtables with a diverse range of stakeholders are held to discuss the results and refine the findings and recommendations.
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Contribute to policy development in the reviewed country by proposing policy options to overcome barriers, illustrated by selected good practice initiatives from other OECD countries.
While the economic crisis is the current focus of policy-makers, there is a need for both short-term and longer-term actions to ensure sustainable economic growth. In response to this issue, the OECD LEED Programme has developed a set of thematic areas on which local stakeholders and employment and training agencies can focus to build sustainable growth at the local level. These include:
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Better aligning policies and programmes to local economic development challenges and opportunities;
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Adding value through skills: Creating an adaptable skilled labour force and supporting employment progression and skills upgrading;
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Targeting policy to local employment sectors and investing in quality jobs, including gearing education and training to emerging local growth sectors and responding to global trends, while working with employers on skills utilisation and productivity; and,
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Being inclusive to ensure that all actual and potential members of the labour force can contribute to future economic growth.
Local Job Creation Dashboard
Chapter 3 of this report provides a summary of the results of the Local Job Creation dashboard, which is a policy implementation capacity assessment tool developed by the OECD. As part of this international comparative project, the OECD has drawn on its previous research to develop a set of best practice priorities across four thematic areas, which is used to assess local practice and implementation capacities (see Box 2 for a list of the thematic areas and sub-indicators). A value between 1 (low) to 5 (high) is assigned to each of the indicators corresponding to the relative strengths and weaknesses of local policy approaches based on best practices in other OECD countries. These indicators are established by looking at a range of quantitative and qualitative data at the local level. The dashboard enables national and local policy-makers to gain a stronger overview of the strengths and weaknesses of the current policy framework, whilst better prioritising future actions and resources.
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1.Better aligning policies and programmes to local economic development
1.1. Flexibility in the delivery of employment and vocational training policies.
1.2. Capacities within employment and VET sectors.
1.3. Policy co-ordination, policy integration and co-operation with other sectors.
1.4. Evidence based policy making.
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Adding value through skills
2.1. Flexible training open to all in a broad range of sectors.
2.2. Working with employers on training.
2.3. Matching people to jobs and facilitating progression.
2.4. Joined up approaches to skills.
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Targeting policy to local employment sectors and investing in quality jobs
3.1. Relevance of provision to important local employment sectors and global trends and challenges.
3.2. Working with employers on skills utilisation and productivity.
3.3. Promotion of skills for entrepreneurship.
3.4. Promoting quality jobs through local economic development.
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Being inclusive
4.1. Employment and training programmes geared to local “at-risk” groups.
4.2. Childcare and family friendly policies to support women’s participation in employment.
4.3. Tackling youth unemployment.
4.4. Openness to immigration.
The approach for Slovenia
The focus of this study is on the range of policies targeting job creation through the implementation of employment, skills, and economic development programmes. The purpose of the study is to describe and evaluate the effectiveness of these policies, in relation to similar approaches across the OECD. The methodology of the study is given by an analytical framework developed by the OECD and applied across a range of countries.
In-depth work was undertaken into two local case studies (South-East Slovenia and Drava) to understand the implementation of these policies. Interviews were undertaken with stakeholders in each region through group discussions and individual interviews (both in person and through email and phone). Each group consisted of representatives of the employment service, skills and training organisations, regional development agencies, local governments and social partners. Additionally, a survey was circulated among public employment service offices and 37 responses were received and analysed.
The OECD conducted a study visit to Slovenia in November 2015 to gather feedback on the findings of the review as well as potential recommendations to improve the overall framework for quality job creation and productivity. Roundtable meetings and project visits were held in each case study area as well as with national stakeholders.
References
Froy, F., S. Giguère and E. Travkina (2010), Local Job Creation: Project Methodology, OECD Local Economic and Employment Development (LEED), OECD Publishing, Paris.