The Politics of Jobless Recovery in Late Industrializing Countries: Finland, South Korea and Poland Compared

Why have many late industrializing countries faced jobless recovery during the 2000s? The conventional answer is that this phenomenon is virtually the same with the unemployment problem that the advanced economies underwent several decades ago due to such factors as power of organized labor, skill-based technology, and generous welfare benefits. However, this paper criticizes this answer for two reasons. First, there are diverging types of joblessness across the late industrializers, including high unemployment (Northern Europe), low employment (East Asia), and both (Eastern Europe). Second, today’s jobless recovery has been associated with the disor- ganization of state-led economies after the countries’ “regime shift” to a neoliberal model. Taking Finland, South Korea, and Poland as examples, this paper investigates how this shift has caused a labor market mismatch. It argues that the neoliberal regime shift has circumvented the industrial demand of labor, while socially embedded patterns of labor market participation have remained intact.