Fostering Employment in the Region of Valencia

        The role and potential of Local Development Agents

Employment is currently the main concern for Valencian society. Finding a job opportunity is rooted to a large extent in the characteristics of diverse local contexts. Hence, beyond international or state level factors such as the economic juncture or the Spanish Strategy for Employment, a number of local items exert a great impact on jobs generation: high-skilled workers, territory resources, economic activity sustainability over time, entrepreneurial network, connectivity or local development public policies.

Local Development and Employment professionals work from municipalities and supra-local institutions towards social cohesion and economic development in their territories, privileging the creation of job opportunities through appropriate local conditions-setting. What are the main tasks of Local Development and Employment managers in the Region of Valencia, and how can they improve their contribution to enlarged employment opportunities?

Conferència a la Universitat de València                         IUDESCOOP

Their embededness to local contexts places Local Development and Employment managers in an advantageous position between public regulation and social, environmental and economic contexts at the local level. On the one hand, they are responsible for the implementation of employment and development policies enacted at the central and regional level. On the other hand, they also undertake the monitoring of human capital and local resources in order to unblock elements that could generate added-value and enhance local economic potential. In this vein, they promote a range of activities oriented to economic growth, emphasising innovation, entrepreneurship, and social and environmental sustainability.

Local Development and Employment managers’ activities have been steered by the regulatory framework, and the central state assessment on their outcome on territories turned to be particularly positive.  Indeed, public spending on local development constitutes one of the most gainful sectors in terms of employment generation. Among the wide range of legally established areas of promotion we find entrepreneurship guidance, vocational training delivery, communication and information society promotion, tourism development, declining industrial sectors restructuring or recovery and valorisation of historical, cultural and cottage industry heritage.

Despite the smooth line transmission existing from public regulation to local implementation, the way back reveals somehow obstructed. Certainly, the new Spanish Strategy for Employment 2012-2014 has made substantial steps forward concerning decentralisation and citizen participation during its design process, approaching the regional level and embracing the contributions of entrepreneurs and trade unions. However, this institutional structure broadly bypasses the contributions of local actors that could have a remarkable value, considering that employment issues are to a large extent locally-based and context-dependent. Namely, the professionals of Local Development and Employment attached to the local level who undertake employment policy implementation are excluded from this process, entailing an avoidable and deeply undermining lack of knowledge on both local fitness of state regulations and the local needs, weaknesses and potential for development  within different territories.

Local Development and Employment professionals stand as key actors in fostering jobs generation at the local level, and they could also play a key role in employment policy-making by steering a better fit of regulations with local economic, social and environmental reality. Besides the relevance of their implementation role, the standarised participation of Local Development and Employment agents in the design and assessment of employment policies would allow a more efficient and effective management of scarcer public economic resources, through the establishment of strategic objectives based on local practise knowledge.

II Conferences on Educative Innovation in Cooperative and Social Economy

"ADLYPSE: L'ocupació des de l'àmbit local i el paper dels AEDL" 

May 29th, 2012