Benchmarking Working Europe 2018

Published every year, the report analyses the state of working Europe explaining with the aid of statistics and graphs the main trends in terms of Europe’s macro-economic situation, its labour market development, the situation of wages and collective bargaining, and worker participation.

The 2018 Benchmarking Working Europe focused on whether the European Union was really on the path towards convergence.

Analysing the state of 'working Europe' with the aid of a multi-level and multi-dimensional set of indicators and thus assessing what current EU policies had achieved or had not achieved, the Benchmarking Working Europe 2018 demonstrated that, despite renewed economic growth in GDP terms, the proceeds of this growth were being unequally shared and structural problems in the areas of education, infrastructure and R&D remained due to the EU's obsession with labour market deregulation and fiscal austerity.

The main sections are:

1. Growth returns but will have to be sustained in order to heal scars and reverse re-emerging divergence
2. Labour market and social developments
3. Developments in social indicators
4. Wages and collective bargaining: a new attempt to ensure fair wages and adequate minimum wages?
5. Social policymaking and workers’ participation (EN)