An examination of the flexibility demands towards the unemployed

Up to now, in policy-oriented unemployment research, most attention has gone to studying the generosity of unemployment benefit systems and linking this generosity to macro-economic outcomes, like duration of the unemployment spell and the aggregate level of unemployment. So far, much less attention has been paid to the obligations unemployed face to obtain these unemployment benefits. Since the introduction of the social security system however, unemployed are required to meet certain demands in order to receive unemployment benefits. These demands include searching for jobs, attending interviews and accepting "suitable" job offers, i.e. job offers that may differ on certain aspects from previously held jobs or educational background, but which are deemed suitable by the public employment agency.

In this study we discuss the job search flexibility that is demanded from unemployed in policy legislation in different OECD countries. OECD countries – and thus also Belgium – have legislation on three types of flexibility demands: occupational, geographical and wage flexibility demands. Firstly, the demands on occupational flexibility imply that an unemployed must to some degree accept job offers in other occupational areas than that of his previous job(s) or studies. Secondly, geographical flexibility implies that an unemployed must to some extent accept job offers which demand a certain predetermined transportation time. Lastly, the wage flexibility demands entail that an unemployed must to some extent accept job offers which offer a lower wage than that of the previous job(s) or than that of the usual wage for that occupation. Although all OECD countries have some legislation on these flexibility demands, their interpretation of these demands differ and can be more or less stringent.

We firstly perform a cluster analysis on 25 OECD countries (including Belgium) as to group these countries in regimes with similar approaches to the flexibility demands and corresponding sanctions. In total, our analysis suggests to distinguish six different clusters. We discuss each of these cluster outcomes. Secondly, for each cluster, we take one country as representative. We questioned the Public Employment Services (PES) of these six representative countries regarding the requirements relating to the flexibility demands, the way in which these demands are monitored and inventoried, and the sanctions applied in case of insufficiently flexible behavior. In the second part of this study, we look more closely at the flexibility demands and sanctioning system of each of the six countries. To conclude, we discuss several recommendations based on the results of the cluster analysis and the survey of the six PES.