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Hi, thanks for doing this. Considering high unemployment, rising youth unemployment and longer unemployment duration, what role do you see for labour market intermediaries such as private employment agencies?

Thanks very much for your answer!

Hi, sorry to be answering your question directed to Ekkehard, but the FT today had a long article on this, and I would like to share something with you on this, which is a quote from Denis Pennel, the MD at Eurociett, the European confederation of private employment services:

"When speaking of ‘temporary work’ it is important to draw a distinction between fixed-term contracts (direct temporary jobs) and agency work (secured via a private employment agency). Indeed, private employment agencies find jobs for workers and train them with the skills they need. They also support jobseekers in transitioning from unemployment to work and from temporary work to more long term positions. They effectively provide a stepping stone function and act as labour market intermediaries, matching workers with jobs. The problem in Spain is that labour flexibility is mostly developed via fixed-term contracts, leading to dead-end jobs while the agency work industry is so strictly regulated that it cannot offered the full range of services it provides in the other EU Member States.

As a consequence, Spain has one of the most segmented labour markets in Europe with half of the workforce enjoying highly-secure work contracts at the expense of the others who have no job security at all. If the Spanish government wants to stimulate job creation it needs to remove unjustified restrictions on the use of private employment agencies and drive better cooperation between public and private employment services in supporting people to enter the labour market."