Target Population

The target population of the inclusive market (IM) are people without recent work experience who fail to find a job in the open labour market. The main group are long-term unemployed, more than 185 000 persons (according to UPSVaR/LFS). In this indicator Slovakia holds the bottom position among the EU countries for a longer period. A much smaller group are persons after serving their sentence – 6 000 persons. A third bigger part includes persons formally inactive, yet those who could be easily rated among long-term unemployed. These include: part of discouraged persons, people in households and persons taking part in requalification courses. The volume of this diverse group ranges from 50 to 125 thousand persons. This represents totally about 300 000 persons.

The target population of 300 thousand persons has some specific features: it is geographically inhomogeneous (mostly people from southern part of central Slovakia and from eastern Slovakia), usually employers avoid hiring people of this social status (long-term unemployed, people after serving sentence) and mostly people with low level of attained education, partly persons from segregated settlements (Roma). This target population represents a group of society resistant to any economic growth.

In the Slovak economy there are about 2 172 000 employed people (Q4 2010, ESNÚ 95 methodology, by quarterly national accounts, plus roughly 200 000 working abroad). There are 2 678 000 economically active (of these: 2 172k employed, 200k short-term unemployed, 300k target group of inclusive market). The target population of inclusive market hence represents 11.2 % of economically active population. One out of nine active persons in Slovakia has no job for a long time, despite the ability to work.

With so large a volume of the target group it is not expected that any solutions to deal with this problem would be fast and cheap at the same time. The aim is, that people from this target population become inclusive employees and eventually move to the open labour market.