Promoting Labour Market Inclusion: Evidence from the Inclusion Policy Lab in Spain and Across Europe

This report reviews the 18 randomised evaluations designed to promote labour market inclusion of individuals at risk of poverty and social exclusion, many of whom were beneficiaries of minimum income schemes. Some of these programs directly sought to help participants access employment opportunities; others focused on preliminary efforts to improve participants’ overall well-being and better prepare them for employment. This approach is consistent with the high levels of vulnerability among participants, many of whom faced pressing needs that required foundational support. For these reasons, this review often focuses on the impact of the evaluated programmes on participants’ intermediate outcomes for labour market inclusion, such as job search intensity, job search skills, or employability.

The Lab’s interventions reviewed span three broad categories: job search assistance, as part of comprehensive social support, or in the form of digital skills training; adult training programs; and interventions addressing labour market barriers for specific groups. Moreover, this review highlights where the results from these experiments either confirm or diverge from the emerging insights from other research in Europe, and includes evidence on additional labour market interventions that have been rigorously evaluated in Europe. Future design of similar interventions should take into account the findings from these studies as promising points of departure. The following policy learnings emerge from this review:

• Comprehensive social inclusion programs that included employment components targeted at families and individuals at risk of poverty were effective in improving dimensions of social inclusion. These programs led to improvements in participants’ job search efforts and, in some cases, their chances of employment.
• Digital skills training programs for individuals or job seekers at risk of poverty and social exclusion were effective in improving participants’ digital competencies. These programs can improve participants’ intermediate outcomes for employment and employment status when complemented with very intense job search assistance. In some cases, these programs improved dimensions of well-being.
• Vocational training programs for long-term unemployed workers or adults at risk of poverty generally improved job search skills, behaviours, and attitudes. Success in improving job search efforts and acquiring new professional competencies does not guarantee better labour market outcomes.
• The personalised and intensive labour market insertion models targeted at people experiencing homelessness and with intellectual disabilities improved job search efforts, employment, and dimensions of well-being and satisfaction.

The results of these pilot evaluations must be interpreted with caution, as the time constraints under which the Lab was operating resulted in some studies having low response rates, uneven data quality, and limited measurement capabilities over a relatively short time period. While the findings we highlight here offer important learnings, these results should be confirmed by further experimental research.

Building on the Lab’s experience, policymaking aimed at promoting labour market inclusion of people at risk of poverty or social exclusion would benefit from the following recommendations:

• Allocating sufficient time to the design phase of evaluations, allowing the integration of existing evidence and the development of methodological approaches that maximise potential learning.
• Fostering close collaboration between policymakers and researchers to ensure that evaluation designs address relevant public policy questions and generate evidence useful for decision-making.
• Planning in advance for the generation and use of actionable evidence, including the use of administrative data, the collection of information on costs, and the monitoring of mediumand long-term outcomes.
• Exploring interventions targeting both job seekers and employers, particularly for groups facing specific barriers to entering the labour market.
• Designing and evaluating programmes that simultaneously address the needs andexpectations of employers and job seekers, in order to promote a better match between labour supply and demand.