Small and medium sized firms and the labour‐market aid system: A Scandinavian study

Only a small minority of all firms in all the Scandinavian countries use the labour‐market related measures, i.e. incentives to take on more workers. Big firms are more frequent users than small or medium sized firms (SMFs). This is because the number of situations in which it is realistic to use them are few in every SMF. Big differences exist within the SMFs. Industrial firms and those on the periphery are more frequent measure users than others. It is hard to prove that these measures have influenced decisions in any firms, although they are often of great financial importance for SMFs. This study of how the authorities succeeded in reaching SMFs with their offers for aid and support in the labour‐market agenda was requested by a committee under the Council for Ministers in the Nordic countries who are attempting to keep unemployment down. SMFs' aversion towards authorities can be broken by personal, oral, lasting contacts. SMFs can be frequent measure users in that they can integrate the measures into the firm's normal life in a flexible way.