Labor Employment Policy Of Western Countries International Comparative Study

Since the 1980s, deep changes have taken place on the labor employment policies in western countries. The basic characteristics of these changes are that the western countries have selected various labor employment policies for their common challenges. These various labor employment policies are composed of the Neo-liberalistic labor employment policy represented by the United States and the United Kingdom, the Conservative labor employment policy represented by the European Continental countries such as France and Spain, the Corporative labor employment policy represented by the Scandinavian countries such as the Sweden, and the flexicurity labor employment policy represented by the Denmark. Based on the above background, this paper mainly studies from three aspects: The first is why the western countries select the various labor employment policies for their common challenges. The second is the basic characteristics and its effects of the various labor employment policies. At last, it sums up the experience or the characteristics of the successful labor employment policies in the globalization age. The whole article is divided in three parts.Section 1, Chapter 1, puts forward of the issue of the common challenges in the field of labor employment and the selection of the various employment policies. Above all, this section introduces the three challenges faced by the western countries since the mid-1970s are the high level unemployment, the failure of the Keynesian employment policies and the rapid development of the globalization. Then it points out the various employment policies is the final selection of the western countries and has them classified according to the relative study on western documents. Thirdly, it gives a brief analysis on the reasons from three aspects——the variety of explanation of the high level unemployment, the different institutions of the welfare countries, the variety of the national literatures.Section 2, Chapter 2 to 5, has a deep analysis on the Neo-liberalistic labor employment policy, Corporative labor employment policy, Conservative labor employment policy and the Flexicurity labor employment policy respectively from the following four aspects of the basic characteristics, theoretical basis, institutional foundation and the effects of labor employment policy. Firstly, this section points out the differences among the four employment policies; Secondly, it discusses that the high-level unemployment and the failure of the Keynesian employment policy together with the rapid development of the globalization are the realistic demands of employment policy changes in western countries. The reason why they select different employment policy lies in that they have different historical and cultural tradition and institutional base. Finally, it indicates that each of the four employment policies has succeeded in some cases, but there are still some problems in themselves.Section 3, chapter 6, concludes the successful experience of employment policies. First in this section, it reviews the western documents on the experience of successful employment policies; then it analyzes the standard for identification and common characteristics of it based on the international comparative studies on the employment policies in Section 2. The success of employment policy should involve the following three points: rate of employment, efficiency and social equity. The common characteristics of the successful employment policies are variety, path dependency and unreplicatedness, complementarities and comprehensiveness, flexicurity and the political viability.