Innovative financing and delivery mechanisms for getting the unemployed into work

Many factors put people at risk of long-term unemployment, including poverty and social exclusion, poor basic skills levels, discrimination, cultural distance from the mainstream labour market and poor local social capital. At the local level a holistic approach can help tackle such issues, with direct interventions in the fields of education and employment complementing wider actions to build social cohesion and community capacity. The OECD Local Economic and Employment (LEED) Programme is exploring OECD experiences in this field assessing area-based strategies which assist the long-term unemployed in re-entering the labour market, the relative advantages and disadvantages of targeted approaches, and the role innovative financing mechanisms can play.