Public Employment Services (PES) are services or authorities responsible for connecting jobseekers to the potential employers. Through the use of information, demand of labor market, and placement, PES authorities try to prevent unemployment within the public sector (concerning jobs within the government agency). In the European Union, the idea of establishing these services was imposed by the European Council and European Parliament in order to improve the matter of unemployment in this geographical sector. The official name of this authory is The European Network of Public Employment Services. Its responsibilities include:
Comparing the PES performance between the European countries through the process of benchmarking, Finding the best practices and mutually learning from one another, more of which can be found in the PES Knowledge Center, Learning about the effect of modernization and improving the PES services delivery, including the Youth Guarantee (a commitment by all Member States to make sure that all young people under the age of 25 have a good quality to continued education, employment, apprenticeship and traineeship), and lastly, Preparing the inputs to European Employment Strategy and the correlating policies regarding labor market.
A Board is responsible for governing this network, in which each of the Member States and Commission are represented by two members. The meetings of the Board take place twice a year in order to promote strategic discussions and make decisions regarding the further activities of the Network.
Challenges of Public Employment Services in Europe
Some of the challenges that the labor market experiences in relation to public employment services include demographic factors, globalization, technological changes, labor market challenge, or a rising income inequality.
Demographic
Demographic factors show that population trends will have a severe impact on the labor market. Over the next 30 years, the European Union will encounter with the problem of population aging. In various European countries, the working population in the economies are already suffering from lack of skills in different occupations and sectors in the economy. The Public Employment Services are responsible for engaging the inactive people and focus on improving employability according to the challenges that these particular people face in different ages.
Globalization
Globalization leads labor market to constantly evolving as a result of increasing use of mobile technologies and connections via Internet. Business try to increase their value through the restructuring processes while placing value of business innovations and upskilling of their labor in order to withstand the competition. Therefore, globalization stretches the importance of reemployment and upskilling of the workers who had been redundant due to restructuring processes. Public Employment Services in EU are therefore requiring improving the employability of people, support job-to-job transition and support the restructuring process of employers.
Technology
Technology has been constantly evolving, causing the labor market to shift as well. Specifically, the shift from primary and manufacturing sectors towards more knowledge-based services and activities. This means that technology makes progress and greater productivity improvements, including the use of machinery, or turning manual tasks into automated. And as it does, the global trends lean towards less employment in manufacturing sectors. Even though a shift towards knowledge-based services allows for opportunities, there is a risk of those opportunities to be taken unequally to the employees. Therefore, public employment services are required to serve as an instrument to offer better opportunities to the disadvantaged ones by providing skills and knowledge to help withstand the technological progress.
Labor Market Skill Mismatch
Countries incapability to adapt workers’ skills to the certain unmet demand for labor, limits them to excel in the economy. While under-qualification is an issue mostly in the low-income countries, the advanced and developed countries, including most of the European Union member states, struggle with an ample number of workers who are actually over-qualified. This brings another task for public employment services to collaborate with labor market stakeholders in order to improve and eventually develop the skills of the labor force to meet the demands.