Regional factors are crucial for the position of enterprises in highly competitive and turbulent markets. A major precondition for the functioning of regional labour markets is adequate information for all actors involved. Respective data have to be current, future-related, fitting the needs of both actors and decision-makers. Regional Labour Market Monitoring as an on-going practice can be seen as an approach to meet these requirements.
Regional Labour Market Monitoring is an instrument for enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of regional labour markets and labour market politics. It generates and disseminates information that turns into knowledge for actors in the regional labour market. To that extent, it contributes to effective decision making and actions. A variety of projects in this area have been set up in several European countries, but there is obviously a lack of interconnection and cooperation between them.
The network, at a European level, supports the further development of methods and concepts by bringing scientists from different countries together.
In 2005 at a national conference of actors and institutes of Regional Labour Market Monitoring, the idea to build an official and European-wide network was born. In March 2006, the European Network of Regional Labour Market Monitoring was founded in Frankfurt/Main at an international conference with the main topic “Monitoring of Regional Labour Markets in European States”. The work of the Network started over with a constitutional workshop about finding the structure and main aims of the network in Brussels in September 2006. Since this conference, the network works every year on another main topic, publishes their work on it and discusses current issues and news about regional labour market monitoring at the annual meeting every year in October.
