Male long-term unemployment and structural employment changes in Ireland

This chapter examines the build-up of male Long term Unemployment (LTU) by allowing for heterogeneity both in the unemployment inflow and conditional survival rates. It describes a consistent semi-annual series of the male flows into and out of the Irish Live Register for the period 1967 to 1995. The chapter utilizes the results of the unemployment flow decomposition and evidence from other studies to argue that it was heterogeneity in the unemployment inflow caused by the changing occupational structure of employment that caused the persistence in LTU. In the Irish case, the fact that the older, relatively uneducated individuals that accummulated in the long term unemployment pool over the 1980s mostly came from the state of employment makes the story of structural employment changes as a cause for the Irish unemployment problem quite plausible. European countries tend to be characterised by more extensive employment protection legislation, greater union power, higher minimum wages, and greater unemployment compensation generosity.