WeLaR – Welfare systems and labour market policies for economic and social resilience in Europe – is a three – year research project funded by the Horizon Europe Framework Programme that aims to examine the impact of digitalisation, globalisation, climate change and demographic shifts on labour markets and welfare states in Europe. WeLaR will not only improve the understanding of the individual and combined effects of these trends, but it will also offer policy proposals helping to adapt welfare systems to these pressing challenges. The project’s ultimate goal is to assist in creating policies that ensure economic growth is distributed fairly across society and generates opportunities for all.
To achieve those goals, the WeLaR team will:
- develop a new framework to study the effects of the four megatrends on the labour market and the welfare state.
- integrate analysis of their impacts on labour supply, demand and market matching while accounting for the interactions among the four megatrends and the mediating role of institutions and policies.
WeLaR will use a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods and stakeholder engagement. The planned output includes 24 research papers, four policy briefs and a Foresight report.
The research is carried on by a consortium comprising 10 institutions from seven European countries:
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven),
Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER),
Institute For Structural Research (IBS),
Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (wiiw),
Centre for Social Innovation (ZSI),
Università degli Studi di Perugia,
Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW),
Aldgate Strategy Group,
Faculty of Economics and Business at the University of Belgrade and
European Social Observatory (OSE).
The WeLaR consortium’s proposal was one of 131 projects submitted to the Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Actions call: Inclusiveness in times of change (HORIZON-CL2-2021-TRANSFORMATIONS-01). The consortium was awarded almost €3 million under grant agreement 101061388. The project will end on 31 August 2025.
contact : piotr.lewandowski@ibs.org.pl
news
On 24 October 2024, Katarzyna Lipowska attended an event organised by the ZEW—Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research in Mannheim—as part of the WeLaR project.
Piotr Lewandowski and Maciej Albinowski participated in the conference of the Network of European Labour Market Research Institutes (ELMI), which took place on October 1-2, 2024, in Brussels.
Between 1 and 3 July, the 16th Summer Academy for Central and Eastern European Studies was held in Tutzing, Germany. Wojciech Szymczak from the IBS presented the results of his research at this event.
On 23rd of May, the conference of project WeLaR took place in Leuven brining researchers working on topics related to the impact of globalization, technological, climate and demographic changes on the labor market. Karol Madoń and Wojciech Szymczak from IBS presented their findings during the conference.
The one-day WELAR workshop brought together labour market economists from European universities and research institutes to discuss and reflect on ten papers on the impacts of AI, green transition and migration on labour demand.
WeLaR - the Horizon Europe project will host a conference on the effects of global trends on European labour markets and welfare states in Leuven, Belgium 23-24 May, 2024.
Leuven, Belgium, 3 March 2023 – WeLaR’s first webinar, “European Welfare States in Crisis? Labour Markets in Flux?” aimed at introducing the project to its stakeholders.
We are going to discuss: European Welfare States in Crisis. Labour markets in flux.
The WeLaR Project aims examine how megatrends affect labour markets and the welfare state.
Publications
We study the effect of the adoption of automation technologies – industrial robots, software and databases – on the incidence of atypical employment in 13 E.U. countries between 2006 and 2018. We combine survey microdata with sectoral information on technology use and exploit the variation at the demographic group level. Using ...
