Guest editorial “role of training for labour market integration”

ABSTRACT

Before introducing the papers, this overview explores employment and employability challenges related to labour market integration, drivers of change associated with increasing vulnerability and precarity, and the implications for skill formation, education and training. Less attention has been paid to those entering or re-entering the labour market at different stages of their careers, yet questions of employability and work readiness are just as relevant to labour market re-entrants. [...]successive economic crises and associated restructuring (Winterton and Forde, 2013) are increasing the number of vulnerable workers and making precarious employment the norm rather than the exception in many labour markets (Burgess et al., 2013). Workers seeking to re-enter the labour market after a period of absence will suffer skill obsolescence in proportion to the length of time they have not been working and the rate of change of technology. Inflexible and opportunistic management behaviour in the recruitment of migrant workers reduces the potential for enterprises to attract talent from the global labour market and leads to more differentiated or segmented recruitment strategies (Guo and Al Ariss, 2015).