Considerations on key open questions in the employment and labor policies

Employment issues are more and more a priority in the agenda of the international meetings (G20) and institutions. There is a general awareness that policies and actions on the topic have not to be strictly limited to the best functioning of the labor market structures, but have to be linked to the policies addressing all the main changing factors of our contemporary societies. "Go structural” is the key recommendation (OECD, 2012). In some respects, this awareness and approach, as well as the related commitments, mostly emerged in the recent hard times, represent a novelty which requires, among other things, a convergence of different scientific discipline, a shared theoretical vision and interpretative methodology of the current changing processes. In this condition the scientific community has the opportunity to give a proper contribution to a sustainable and balanced progress of the society by verifying the elements and the stage of this convergence. To this aim the Author highlights the importance to adopt a systemic approach in the analysis, to refer to the post-industrial society model, to clarify the implications of a structural crisis. Particularly challenging for the scientific community are the open problems dealing with the need of new economic policies, new relationship between quality and quantity in the development processes, new welfare systems; and, for what concerns specifically the labor policies, the indications to elaborate with reference to three main strategic issues: flexibility, skills and competences, monitoring and the relations to build between Information, Communication, Knowledge, Decisions and Action. The advices as well as the questions presented in the article open the way to possible, new research activities