Labor market insertion

Labor market insertion is the set of actions aimed at accompanying and facilitating access to employment in accordance with their needs and capabilities to certain groups that, due to their socioeconomic circumstances, have more difficulties when it comes to entering the labor market. These may be people who have not yet had a job, who have not yet been employed in our country, or who are returning to the labor market after a period of inactivity.

Labor market inclusion not only guarantees greater economic security, but also promotes self-esteem, physical and emotional well-being, socialization, and autonomy. Institutions, companies, and other organizations develop labor integration policies aimed at facilitating the entry into the labor market of people at risk of social exclusion, by means of different tools:

The General Disability Law establishes that companies with 50 or more employees must allocate 2% of their jobs to persons with disabilities. Some companies, such as Repsol, exceed this percentage, as well as exceeding the legal obligations of all the countries in which it operates, but there are also other strategies used in the field of labor market insertion:

• Training, which allows those who seek work to acquire skills according to their capabilities that allow them social and labor insertion, or professional certificates that prove that they can perform a certain job.
• Training and accompaniment in the search for employment, to help people belonging to these groups to trace an itinerary and find job opportunities.
• The adaptation of workplaces for persons with disabilities, in order to facilitate the labor market insertion of persons with physical, mental, or sensory disabilities.

The search for employment can be a complicated process, and finding job opportunities is much more difficult when those who look for work are people of low income, of a certain age, or who are discriminated against because of certain circumstances. These are some of the groups with the greatest difficulties for labor market integration:

• Persons with physical, mental, or sensory disabilities
• People with addictions or illnesses
• People over 45
• Migrant, racialized, or ethnic minority group individuals
• Victims of gender violence
• People belonging to the LGBTI community
• Young people coming from juvenile centers
• Inmate or ex-inmate population
• People with very low economic capacity
• Long-term unemployed persons

In many cases, people at risk of social exclusion meet more than one of these conditions, which makes it even more difficult for them to find a stable and normalized job. To give an example in figures, there are more than four million people in Spain alone who suffer from some kind of disability. According to the most recent data from the Spanish National Statistics Institute (INE), from the 2020 Survey on Disability, Personal Autonomy, and Dependency Situations (EDAD), 4.38 million people acknowledged having some kind of disability.

Although progress must continue to be made on the road to labor market insertion, in recent decades both corporate social responsibility and legislation and tax incentives have boosted the labor market insertion of people at risk of social exclusion. Foundations that undertake an economic activity in which they employ people with these profiles or special employment centers are also examples of labor market insertion.

Other examples of labor market insertion could be:

1. Those of young people who are being encouraged to get their first job
2. Women who return to the labor market after caring for their children
3. Tax credits for companies for hiring people over 45 years of age, persons with disabilities, or victims of gender violence