About | EU-ERA

About EU-ERA

Towards Evidence-based Policy Formulation
Advanced Analytics for Future Workforce

Overview

Centre for Future Labour Market Studies (EU-ERA) is a state-of-the-art research centre in Malaysia that focuses on the labour market research and analytics, which was established in September 2020. The foundation of developing EU-ERA is inspired based on the best practices of several established institutions globally such as Korea Employment Information Services (KEIS), IZA Institute of Labour Economics, Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA) and International Training Centre of the International Labour Organisation (ITC-ILO).

The establishment of EU-ERA begins with the research collaboration between Employment Insurance System (EIS) at Social Security Organisation (SOCSO) and Universiti Putra Malaysia. The overall objective of the establishment of EU-ERA at EIS, SOCSO is to strengthen the capacity of the Ministry of Human Resources (MOHR) and the SOCSO, in particular, in developing, implementing and evaluating sound labour policies. EU-ERA supports this initiative by providing a critical labour market policy reflection through advanced analytics and in-depth evaluation of the labour demand in supporting the implementation of the Active Labour Market Policy (ALMP) under Employment Insurance Systems (EIS).

During the two years with SOCSO and MOHR (September 2020 to August 2022), EU-ERA has shown a considerable contribution to the research, publication and policy papers related to labour market. Thanks to SOCSO and MOHR for giving opportunities to EU-ERA in contributing evidence-based labour market policies.

Mission

The mission of the EU-ERA is to blend the scientific and empirical approach into the current policy development which cover end-to-end labour market policies ranging from the labour supply to the labour demand issues. The research areas and policy analyses are broadly oriented into three dimensions namely labour supply, job market and the labour demand as outlined in the following figure. In meeting the scopes, the centre focuses on forecasting and modelling; applied policy analysis; and capacity building and structured training programs for labour market assessment tools.

Technical Expertise

High quality and reliable research outputs are always backed by strong methodological foundation. Our research team members have the expertise in core quantitative economic tools of econometrics, input-output (IO), social accounting matrix (SAM), computable general equilibrium (CGE), system dynamics (SD) and data envelopment analysis (DEA).

These quantitative tools are not only vital for labour policy assessments but also in explaining inter-linkages between labour market and wide range of developmental issues such as investment, trade, income distribution, poverty, social policy, demography and ageing, and migration. Our team members also have extensive experience in primary and secondary data analytics in the areas of economics and labour.