Experiences of public employment with the example of two cities in the Northern Great Plain

Szabó, Andrea

Keywords: government intervention, public employment, council, management, reintegration

Over the last two decades different governments have preferred public employment to mobilise the long-term unemployed people of active age, which were managed deci-sively by local councils. According to experts, the secondary labour market is created according to several interests and works with the same group of people in the care sys-tem, so instead of reintegrating the target group it can perpetuate the existing social and economic problems. According to the current macro-level impact assessments the programmes have low reintegration effects. The purpose of the research was to explore a higher output in the case of well organised, specific programmes. To this the pro-gramme organisational and referral practice (management) of two northern great plain cities, Debrecen and Hajdúböszörmény were analysed, and furthermore I followed up the labour market situation of the participants. With a new methodological approach, applying a longitudinal panel study, in case of the programmes in Debrecen 22. 1% of the former participants, and in case of programme in Hajdúböszörmény, 19. 4% of the participants had a declared employment relationship. The education can be considered as a key variable of employment, which was confirmed by the moderate (r = -0.578) correlation coefficient. The endogenous factors of reintegration such as the manage-ment, the practice of programme organisation and targeted referral or the transfer of marketable skills were decisive for successful outcomes, and the principle of ‘at the right time and place the right people’ has prevailed. The actual economic situation oc-curred as an exogenous factor. In the study of Hajdúböszörmény, I surveyed the agri-cultural connection of the respondents. Although 85% of the sample had their own garden, only 39.1% of them farmed and mostly for self-supply purposes.

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