Whatever the relationship between employment and output growth, it is clear that the major problem remains the creation of more jobs. The response in terms of increased labour market participation to the relatively small improvement in job opportunities in the period 1994-96 shows that there is a labour reserve in Europe which can be mobilised, over and above those recorded as being unemployed. Compared with the employment rate in the US, this reserve amounts to over 20 million people to be found jobs. A range of measures are needed to unlock this growth potential and to make growth sustainable. While in the short term, net job creation depends mainly on the rate of output growth, in the longer term it also depends on institutional structures and societal choice on the priority given to employment and how possible conflicts, between this and maintaining productivity growth and competitiveness are reconciled.
Job creation depends to a high degree on creating the right economic environment.
Product and services markets need to function in a more effective way in order to create new opportunities which will generate additional demand for labour. Measures proposed under the action plan for the Single Market should therefore be implemented without any delay at national and Community level. The ageing of the Union's labour force, allied with the increasing pace of new technology means that we are facing an ever-expanding skills gap. Societies must maintain their competitiveness with a shrinking number of young people with modern skills and a large proportion of older workers who have been trained for technologies no longer used or for jobs no longer needed. Second, to commit government and business to much more than the current token efforts to upgrade and continuously train the whole of the adult labour force so that they have the ability to meet the challenges brought about by new technologies and third, to develop better programmes combining training, incentives and opportunities for unemployed and displaced workers to equip them with the skills and abilities to enable them to reintegrate into the mainstream of society.