DStv Channel 403 Tuesday, 11 February 2025

Austrian project may have answer to long-term unemployment

Sarah Sklenicka feels 'more confident' about finding employment after working with MAGMA

VIENNA - An experimental Austrian scheme claims to be a world first in tackling long-term unemployment.

The village of Gramatneusiedl near Vienna now has a zero jobless rate after guaranteeing work to all its 129 long-term unemployed.

The project shows it is possible to eradicate this stubbornly difficult problem at a community level, said economist Oliver Picek of Vienna's Momentum Institute.

"It is possible to give a job to everyone who needs one," he told AFP.

The MAGMA pilot project offers training in carpentry, gardening, sewing and other work the community or local businesses need at minimum wage rates to everyone who has been out of work for more than one year.

Before starting, they get eight weeks of counselling to identify their strengths and goals, with many reporting that the project has helped rebuild their self-confidence.

Organisers said all but a dozen of the village's long-term unemployed took up the training offer, and that was because of health problems.

Yasemin Yaman does carpentry and sewing and has overcome depression
AFP | JOE KLAMAR

Economist Picek said the success of the hyper-local approach was "a proof of concept of the idea of job guarantees". 

Although Austria's unemployment rate is below the EU average at 4.6 percent, the Alpine nation has labour shortages in many sectors, and part of the population remains marginalised.

Gramatneusiedl's labour market was typical of Lower Austria, making it a perfect test bed for the province's employment service.

The big challenge for the scheme was "what do you do with certain people who we cannot integrate into the primary job market?" said the service's deputy director Sandra Kern.

The village of 4,000 also happens to be the site of a pioneering 1933 study on mass unemployment during the Great Depression.

It remains to be seen whether the four-year MAGMA project -- which costs less than 30,000 euros ($32,500) per person a year, an amount comparable to unemployment benefit -- will be prolonged or adopted more widely, Kern said.

But a study of the scheme by Oxford University found "strong positive impacts... on participants' economic and non-economic well-being." 

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