J65 - Unemployment Insurance; Severance Pay; Plant ClosingsReturn

Unemployment is undoubtedly phenomenon with serious social-economic impact on individuals and society as a whole. It is however also affecting public budgets lowering their incomes and increasing their costs. In accordance to recent economic crisis and continuous indebting of state budgets unemployment has become an interesting issue from the public deficit point of view. This paper estimates public budgets costs of unemployment in the Czech Republic in 2009. However the proposed methodology is generally applicable. We calculate not only direct cost which consist of tax reduction and unemployment benefits but also indirect cost resulting from decreased consumption (and production) of newly unemployed individual. Our method is based on construction of median unemployed, who represents a typical unemployed with median wage, age, education and length of unemployment. Indirect effects of unemployment are calculated with modified Okun's law estimate.

The main objective of this article is to analyse the institutional framework of labour market function. Theoretical literature has created a set of institutional aspects such as employment protection legislation, structure of wage bargaining, taxation of labour, active labour market policies, the system of unemployment benefits. On the basis of these institutional aspects and their setting we can judge general labour market setting or we can determine the dimension of labour market flexibility. Attention is also paid to influence of these institutional aspects on employment or unemployment.