The czech labor market in the second half of the nineties

The paper analyses the developments on the Czech labor market in 1996 - 2000 from the perspective of economic adjustment: employment, unemployment and active labor market policies. On the one hand increasing economic pressures intensified the pace of the changes. On the other hand signals of hysteresis on the supply-side of the labor market may be identified: worsening efficiency of job-search, growth of long-term unemployment, increasing level of NAIRU. Since the flexibility of the labor markets seems to be crucial for successful economic adjustment and economic growth within contemporary de-industrialized and globalized economy, role of active labor market policies may be more important to influence the flexibility of the labor-force.

Keywords: long-term unemployment, hysteresis, natural rate of unemployment, active labor market policy, flexibility