A TWO-THRESHOLD FRAMEWORK FOR EDUCATED UNEMPLOYMENT, VULNERABLE EMPLOYMENT, AND WORKER WELFARE
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35334/8m53kp08Keywords:
Educated Unemployment, Precarious employment, Worker well-being, Active labour-market policy, Decent workAbstract
Educated unemployment and precarious employment are frequently addressed as separate development problems, even though workers often move between them. This structured integrative review examines labour-market entry, employment quality, and worker well-being through a double-threshold framework. The first threshold concerns access to paid work, whereas the second concerns whether the resulting job provides adequate income, security, rights, voice, safety, and opportunities for development. Evidence was synthesised from empirical studies, reviews, and policy reports on active labour-market programmes, skills recognition, matching, formalisation, labour regulation, social protection, and occupational health. The synthesis shows that interventions more consistently improve immediate outputs, such as training completion, placement, registration, and service use, than durable employment quality and well-being. Placement without quality may shift educated jobseekers into mismatch, underemployment, or insecure work, while protection without entry pathways may reinforce insider–outsider divisions. The article’s contribution is an evaluation architecture that jointly assesses access, job quality, well-being, equity, and persistence over time. Effective policy therefore requires complementary demand-side measures, credible matching institutions, enforceable employment standards, portable social protection, and worker participation
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