The Industry Employability Index: Taking account of supply and demand characteristics

Employability has become a key issue in employment policy debates. However, this concept still lacks a sound theoretical and empirical basis. The authors propose to capture its various dimensions using indicators of workers' willingness and capacity to be mobile, to be trained and to be functionally flexible, together with measures of sector-specific need for employability and "effectuation conditions". These indicators, reflecting both supply (workers') and demand (industry) characteristics, are then combined into an index for cross-sectoral comparison. An empirical illustration covering 13 sectors of the Dutch economy gives separate indexes for young workers, older workers, female workers and low-skilled workers.