About US
Our aim is to deliver an evaluation model of the effectiveness of Public Employment Services (PES) tracking support types (digital, human-mediated or mixed) in improving employability among rural NEETs aged 25-29.
Our project is submitted under support Area 3 - Analysis and Research, based on interdependent management, engagement & dissemination, and scientific work packages to fulfill three contributions. Our aim is to broaden knowledge of the effects of employment initiatives targeting rural NEETs, by creating a cross-country model of how policies influence PES tracking deliverance. Another goal is to enlarge the capacity of evaluating effects of employment initiatives for NEETs in rural areas, by validating impact assessment protocols for the most replicable programs of on-the-ground PES tracking support types, considering overall and specific groups of NEETs. A further target is to increase transnational use of impact studies among policymakers and researchers, by supporting their participation in developing/incorporating evidencebased impact methods for PES tracking evaluation.
We address the Fund call vision by focusing on rural NEETs. These youths are ignored by research, hard to engage with, and challenged by multiple structural risk factors. We will concentrate on their vulnerabilities in the short-term by establishing a baseline for PES support types’ effectiveness in their employability indicators and, in the long-run, by setting an evaluation framework for effective PES tracking development.
The consortium will rely on a sound multidisciplinary, theoretical and methodological approach, by concentrating on Baltic, South and Southeastern States with disparate rural NEETs’ proportions and different degrees of PES digitalization, adding meaningful variability to comparative analyses. Our outputs will be streamed into a working group dedicated to PES tracking impact evaluation to tie in with a parallel initiative, the Rural NEET Youth Observatory, by 2024.
WORKING PACKAGES
partners
PROJECT GOALS
Our aim is aligned with the call’s main target group, paying special attention to youths facing multiple barriers to employment, namely territorial, gender and ethnic inequalities.
Our core goal addresses three interconnected challenges (from general to specific):
Challenge 2: overall lack of studies and impact assessment models for PES tracking support impact on vulnerable youths
Challenge 1: mismatch between broadband policy package aims (e.g. Youth Guarantee), on-the-ground PES deliverance quality and NEETs’ needs in rural areas
Challenge 3: pressure for PES tracking support digitalization by States, in the
aftermath of COVID-19, without evidence of what are the most effective tracking
support types for overall and rural NEETs’ subgroups.
TARGET GROUPS
We will target 1,000 researchers from diverse disciplines that assess employment policy implementation.
They are targeted across scientific activities/outputs (conferences, webinars, publications) to stream our model of PES tracking support types impact assessment into future research projects across Europe and worldwide.
Based on the Eurostat Labor Force Survey (2018), our end beneficiaries are 48,184 rural NEETs aged 25-29 registered in PES of the consortium’s beneficiary countries. The NEET category in these areas comprises very diverse subgroups, from short/long-term unemployed youths to those registered, but actually inactive due to family care duties (e.g. young mothers), physical disabilities or special needs.
Gender gaps (e.g. women having limited access to jobs) and inequalities due to ethnicity also fluctuate across partner countries.
Thus, our evaluation model will be a comprehensive one, assessing contextual and personal circumstances under which each PES tracking support type is more effective in addressing NEETs’ employability needs.
This means that we will determine:
(1) the impact of different types of PES tracking on NEETs’ observable (e.g. employment rates) and unobservable (e.g. self-efficacy) employability indicators,
(2) PES tracking support types’ effectiveness across distinctive NEETs’ subgroups (unemployed vs inactive; men vs women; different ethnic groups),
(3) key factors behind PES tracking types’ effectiveness overall and for NEETs’ subgroups.