Employment in Europe 2005. Recent trends and prospects

The 17th edition of the annual Employment in Europe report presents a panorama of recent developments in the labour markets of the enlarged EU and a short snapshot of the labour market situation in the acceding and candidate countries. This year, the report reviews the achievements of the European Employment Strategy, investigating developments in its three main objectives: full-employment, quality and productivity at work, and strengthening social cohesion and inclusion. It furthermore reflects on the importance of domestic demand for employment creation, as despite the positive development in labour markets following employment reforms, policy measures can only solve part of the problems. It also presents recent data on earnings disparities and analyses the determinants of the earnings distribution in the EU, thus reflecting another dimension of social and territorial cohesion and feeding into the debate on efficiency and equity. Finally, the report examines in detail the current situation and past developments concerning the inactive population, providing figures on its size and structure, the reasons for being inactive and as such could be a guide to identifying where measures to increase participation could most effectively be targeted.