Editorial. The backlash against globalisation: What does it mean for employment policy?

2016 was a paradoxical year for employment policy. While an expanding majority of OECD countries had finally closed the massive jobs gap that opened during the Great Recession and unemployment continued to fall, people in a number of countries expressed increased dissatisfaction with economic performance and, in some of them, clearly indicated they did not believe that policy makers were effectively representing their interests. While the Great Recession left deep scars in many countries, the economic discontent also centres on the perception that deeper international economic integration disadvantages many workers while offering the lion’s share of the benefits to large corporations and a cosmopolitan elite. The perception that the international economic system is “rigged” clearly challenges the democratic legitimacy of current policies and thus needs to be taken seriously. It also challenges the policy advice offered by international organisations like the OECD, which has long emphasised the economic benefits of global integration, but only recently adopted an inclusive growth approach that pays due attention to the distribution of those benefits across the population. In view of the current scepticism about the policy orthodoxy, this editorial begins the process of reassessing which choices labour market policy makers have got more or less right and which they have got wrong and where a change of approach is required. These reflections are intended to contribute to the broader rethinking of the full range of economic policies that is currently underway at the OECD and elsewhere.