Job Quality in an Era of Flexibility

3Deregulation, job security and employability during the Great Recession

A multilevel analysis

Dragoș Adăscăliței and Federico Vegetti

Introduction

The economic crisis that began in 2008 has created important labour market imbalances in many European Union (EU) member states. The steady decline in average unemployment levels witnessed across the EU by 2008 was suddenly cancelled, with average unemployment levels reaching 10.9 percent in the first quarter of 2013. This figure hid a large variation between EU member states: whereas Greece and Spain reached unprecedented levels of unemployment in 2013 of 27.5 percent and 26.1 percent respectively, in Germany the unemployment level stood at 5.2 percent in the same year. Even more, unemployment ...