Unemployment in Austria: Its Shape and Development Since 1990

In the 1990s, accelerating structural change went hand in hand with an ever brisker pace of employment dynamics and an increasing deterioration of traditional employment structures. Expressing this structural change, the rise in unemployment is specifically affecting those individuals who are at the beginning or end of their employment career, i.e., the young and the old, as well as individuals of low or medium qualifications. As a consequence, long-term unemployment is on the increase. Types of fragmented employment (mostly) excluded from the social protection schemes against unemployment pose new challenges for social assistance schemes.