Labour markets in a moral crisis: structural unemployment and the employment service reform in Lithuania

ABSTRACT

The article analyses the political dynamics of the Employment Service reforms in Lithuania that came into force in 2022. It is argued that the reforms were driven by the outbreak of public alarm over growing and reaching unacceptably high-level structural unemployment. The moral panic approach is used to analyse the process of reform-making. It is argued that the reforms, instead of balancing labour supply and demand, focused on re-imposing moral order in society by (a) the implementation of the new assimilative and coercive measures directed at the unemployed, and (b) changes in unemployment statistics that reduced the count of the unemployed.

KEYWORDS:

• Moral scare
• responsibilisation
• structural unemployment
• public employment services
• neoliberal reforms
• Lithuania

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Sixty percent of Lithuanians think that immigration is more of a problem than opportunity, the highest proportion (together with Greece and Cyprus) in the European Union and double the EU average at 31 per cent. Only 30 per cent of Lithuanians say that the integration of immigrants in their area of residence has been successful, the second lowest across the EU; the EU average on this measure is 50 per cent (European Commission 2021).

2 The unprovoked and brutal Russian invasion in Ukraine on February 24, 2022, drastically accelerated the process of Lithuania becoming an immigrant-receiving country. By the end of 2022, the country welcomed 101 thousand refugees from Ukraine and Belarus, making Lithuania into the fifth largest per capita recipient of refugees among EU countries. As a result, the total number of foreign-born residents living in the country increased to 145 thousand or to 5% of the total population (BNS 2022). However, acceptance and support of those displaced by the war in Ukraine and political repression in Belarus had little to do with concerns over growing structural unemployment or labour shortages. Sheltering and supporting Ukrainians and Byelorussians are perceived not only as humanitarian responsibility but also as a matter of geo-strategic security of the country, i.e., a part of a campaign to protect national sovereignty based on prevailing consensus that if Russia succeeds in occupying Ukraine, it will not stop there.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Lietuvos Mokslo Taryba: [Grant Number 13.1.1-LMT-K-718-05-0008].

Notes on contributors

Arunas Juska

Arunas Juska is a professor at the department of sociology, East Carolina University, USA. He writes extensively on the Baltic region with a focus on policing and rural development. His most recent research is on labour migration, neoliberal policy-making, and Baltic labour standards.

Romas Lazutka

Romas Lazutka is a professor at the department of social policy, Vilnius University, Lithuania. His recent publications are on the working conditions of platform workers and the social protection of self-employed and migrants. He served as a social policy adviser for the Government.