Acute labor market issues
For decades, we have heard about labor market problems regarding shortages in specific professions. However, timely identification—meaning planning for workforce needs before a shortage actually arises—has been neglected. This may be partly due to the popularity of so-called foreign labor pools. Recently, there have been attempts to link unemployment—and the receipt of public funds for housing and basic living expenses—to so-called socially useful work; yet, such work likely involves tasks for which we are not actually qualified. Leaving aside the fact that prison inmates used to call this "forced labor"—since the law cited it as an alternative to a prison sentence or a fine—a question now arises: can we still speak of a welfare state based on solidarity, and what does it mean for a state to be founded on social justice? There is also the long-standing question of whether it pays to invest in one’s own education, given that years of schooling may yield only personal knowledg...