Efforts to reduce the duration of unemployment spells should be a key element in strategies to reduce overall unemployment. There is some evidence that the long-term unemployed are relatively more likely to become very-long-term unemployed in some countries, while they are more likely to exit the labour force in others. In European countries, the shares of prime-aged males in long-term unemployment and in potentially-avoidable disability and early retirement appear to be similar.

A special analysis of longitudinal data for European countries is used here to examine the role of recurrent unemployment and explore alternative measures of long-term unemployment.

A second section examines issues of timing in the design of active labour market policies.