What Can Active Labour Market Policies Do

Ireland faces a crisis of mass unemployment.More than 14 per cent of the labour force is unemployed, and long-term unemployment is growing rapidly.Active labour market policies (ALMPs) -consisting of a range of assistance, training and employment programmes to support the unemployed back to work -have been held out as an essential part of the policy response to unemployment.This paper examines a wide range of national and international research on the effectiveness of ALMPs to ask: i) what do ALMPs do for the unemployed?, ii) are some programmes more effective than others?iii) what can we expect ALMPs to achieve in a recession?The paper shows that while research on the impact of active labour market programmes is far from conclusive and faces a number of difficult methodological challenges, it does provide a basis on which to identify the types of programmes that have been found to enhance the employment prospects of their unemployed clients.