Distinction can be made between demand-side and supply-side policies to improve the working of the labour market in matching people to available jobs
Reducing occupational immobility: Immobility is a cause structural unemployment.
Policies such as apprenticeship schemes aim to provide the unemployed with the new skills they need to find fresh employment and to improve the incentives to find work. In 2013, over 500,000 people started apprenticeships in the UK.
For many years the poor quality of work-place training has been a concern, with evidence of a persistent skills-gap in the UK. In a report published in 2011, a trade union reported that 11% of British adults do not have any qualifications.In some areas such as parts of Glasgow and Birmingham, more than a third of people of working age have no qualifications.
Reducing the geographical immobility of labour: Many people have the right skills to find fresh work but factors such as high house prices and housing rents, family and social ties and regional differences in the cost of living make it difficult and sometimes impossible to change location in order to get a new job. Many economists point to a persistently low level of new house-building as a major factor impeding labour mobility and the chances finding new work.
Benefit and tax reforms: To some economists, a policy that reduces the real value of welfare benefits might increase the incentive for the unemployed to take a job. But it is rare that the root cause of someone staying out of work is the prospect of out of work welfare handouts. Targeted measures to improve people's incentives might include linking welfare benefits to participation in work experience programmes or lower marginal tax rates for people on low incomes.
