In addition, minimum wage schemes and wage agreements reached by collective bargaining need to take account of the need to preserve jobs for low-productivity workers by reducing labour costs. Second, there are “active labour market measures” which provide programmes of education, training and work experience targeted at the long-term unemployed.
Third, reforms to the tax and benefit systems could be implemented which ensure that people are significantly better off in work than out of it. I should like to emphasise that the structural reform agenda available to national governments to promote economic development extends well beyond the reform of labour markets.