Just Jobs Index – Europe

Jobs have taken center stage since the wake of the financial crisis of 2008. Countries such as Spain and Greece experienced high levels of unemployment and were among the European countries that implemented austerity measures aimed at addressing the economic crisis. As a result, expenditure on social protection has declined in a number of countries across the European Union. The various policy measures applied since the onset of the financial crisis is debated across the political spectrum. At the core, high-quality jobs remain important for a knowledge intensive economy.

Which countries are succeeding in creating good new jobs for their labor markets? Where are job creation policies effectively producing not only employment but just jobs — complete with fair remuneration, social protections, labor rights and opportunities for economic mobility? The issue of creating quality jobs is complex and the question of whether conditions for JustJobs are improving or getting worse – both in the long term and in this time of economic crisis – must be addressed urgently. Due to the lack of a comprehensive measure that captures relevant and interrelated concepts around JustJobs, the debate about jobs is often limited to addressing specific issues such as unemployment or an increase in minimum wage.

The Just Jobs Index, or JJI, is a new international measure of fair jobs. It seeks to broaden the global discourse on employment. The European Union JustJobs Index is intended as a starting point to initiate a discussion and attract interest on the same in a European context. The availability of data in the European Union allows for the inclusion of more relevant indicators than in the global index, and provides an opportunity for exploring rich and valid insights into JustJobs performance using the EU JustJobs Index.