Workforce heterogeneity and unemployment benefits: the need for policy reassessment in the European Union

Unemployment benefit systems fail to take into account the increasing heterogeneity of both employment and unemployment. For many of the member states of the European Union, recent policies to reduce public expenditures have fallen back on conventional notions of work and participation, regardless of the expansion in the proportion of non-conventional employment, such as the greater shares of part-time and temporary work, and the increasing participation of women. This means that governments are providing weaker protection against the costs of unemployment for those groups, particularly women and young people, who do not fit the full-time continuous labour market participant model, despite the acceptance of the principle of equal opportunity and the active promotion of flexible labour markets with heterogeneous jobs and heterogeneous workers. In this article, we consider the uneven impact of systems of unemployment insurance on men's and women's independent access to unemployment benefits across the EU. The example of gender is insightful given the concentration of women among 'atypical' forms of employment and also highlights the influence of patterns of household organization. Eligibility conditions based on continuous employment history and minimum weekly hours or earnings thresholds exacerbate women's unequal access to benefits, given their overrepresentation in low-paid, precarious or aytpical employment. We also assess the principles governing the calculation of the level and duration of income compensation for the unemployed, taking into account differences in men's and women's earnings as well as differences in access to benefits.