NATIONAL LABOUR MARKET POLICIES
Basic Information Reports
3.1.General Measures
The most important objectives of labour market and employment policy in Austria are to reduce unemployment and to achieve a high level of employment. The fundamental preconditions for the accomplishment of these goals are long-term and stable growth with economic use of resources, a competitive and open economy, a stable monetary framework, which is committed to long-term goals, and subsidiary state intervention wherever private initiative fails.
Since the opening of the East and Austria's complete institutional integration into the EU, actual activity on the Austrian labour market, which was considerable to begin with, has recently increased. Thus, there are greater demands on social and labour market policy measures.
Even if active labour market policy measures fail to provide a fundamental solution to the problem of under-employment - the limited scope of a small open economy such as Austria's means this is a challenge for macroeconomic employment policy - then such measures still fulfil an essential supportive function in the increasingly rapid process of structural change, especially by matching supply of and demand for skills and generally pursuing a more socially acceptable transformation. In this respect, the broad range and wide-reaching deployment of instruments is an important feature of Austrian labour market policy; thus, the specific problems of diverse groups who are affected by unemployment can be addressed.
Employment policy is especially characterised by the integration of economic policy areas within the framework of a social-partner model for the resolution of conflicts. Hence, the actors strive to coordinate budgetary, monetary, currency, wages, structural and industrial policy in order to best achieve the goals of growth, price stability, budget consolidation and full employment. One of the consequences is that cyclical fluctuations are less severe in Austria than in comparable countries; this also has a positive impact on the labour market.
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