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Both young and older people are often considered to have a particularly difficult position on the labour market. The labour markets for these two groups are extremely different, however – basically, the only common denominator for the groups is a relatively low labour force participation. Naturally, this low labour force participation has completely different explanations for youths and older people.

Youth

What is typical for young people is that they are to make the transition between education and working life. This transition often includes periods of unemployment. These periods are on average short, but at the same time sufficiently common for unemployment in this group to typically be higher than in the population as a whole. A smaller group of young people, often individuals with incomplete grades from grammar school, often have more obvious problems in getting established on the labour market. Our research aims at increasing the understanding of what factors affect how smooth the transition between school and working life is and estimating the effects of the efforts that are made to have an impact on this transition and in order to make possible unemployment periods as short as possible.

Older people

What is typical for older people is that they seldom become unemployed. Average unemployment is lower than for the population as a whole, but the unemployment spells that occur are much longer. Studies of the labour market for older people can concern the factors that affect the decisions to leave or not leave the labour market (for example through old age pension or different types of early retirement). The long unemployment spells of older people also makes it important both to understand those factors that affect the period in unemployment and also what types of policy measures that can contribute to make it shorter.