근로빈곤층 자립지원을 위한 직업능력개발 연계 방안 연구

Abstract

본 연구는 근로빈곤층 자립 지원 정책의 추이를 파악하고 직업능력개발정책을 효과적으로 연계하기 위한 방안을 모색하는 것을 그 목적으로 한다.

Working poor, defined as those who are willing and able to work but have trouble in getting job and moving out of poverty, has drawn much attention from employment and welfare policy makers across the globe. This means that poverty is not only due to loss of job or inactivity in the labor market, but due to the quality and retention of jobs, signifying the increasing importance of social policy that aims to link employment and welfare in resolving the working poverty problem. This study investigates the roles of vocational skills development policy in supporting self sufficiency of working poor. Focus is given to income maintenance, employment service, and employment incentives, and a critical assesment is made of the roles and positions of skills development policy in terms of the linkage to these policy packages. Delineating the concept, composition, and the roles of vocational skills development policy in supporting self-sufficiency of working poor, self-sufficiency is defined as ‘exiting poverty through labor market entry and staying ’out of poverty’ status by employment retention’. To achieve self sufficiency of working poor, the configuration of income maintenance, employment incentives, and employment services needs to be established in a more concrete manner. The roles of vocational skills development policy deserve scrutiny as the welfare benefits are being transformed into individually tailored benefits under the National Basic Living Security System. Policy suggestions have been made for vocational skills development in supporting self-sufficiency of working poor in two aspects: 1) reform of skills development policy into an employment friendly system, 2) strengthening of the effectiveness of employment-welfare linkage services. The former includes policy intervention for minimizing skills mismatches between supply of job seekers and demands of business in regard to initial and continuing skills development, launching locally based industry tailored human resource development system and fine-tuning of local demands and supply through continuous consultation and adjustment, and strengthening the lifelong employment-skills development-welfare linkages. The latter includes policy intervention for combining employment support and tailored social services, reducing blind spots of unemployment insurance and incentivizing reemployment for benefit claimants as well as for welfare beneficiaries, streamlining delivery services for social welfare and employment services, establishing a network-based administration system, and linking employment services information to human resources development database. Finally, this study suggests that pilot projects be implemented to launch a case management system to better deliver vocational skills development programs for working poor in the newly opening employment welfare centers and to reshape the existing centers by specific functions the in-house partner agencies perform in delivering their employment and welfare services.