ESTIMATING THE EMPLOYMENT SECURITY THROUGH E-LEARNING: AN OVERVIEW IN 12 EUROPEAN COUNTRIES

The main objective of this paper is to prove that the e-learning helps to obtain a statistically significant estimate in relation to the calculation of employment security. In the current economic context and its relation to labor market, one of the most important factors for workers is related to their employability, and one of the dimensions most associated with the employability has to do with employment security. This issue is also one of the most relevant governmental concerns.
This paper uses different variables related to working conditions (4 indicators), education (2 indicators), e-skills (19 indicators) and e-learning (2 indicators) from Eurostat (the statistical office of the European Union) for the period 2007-2013 in the following 12 countries: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and United Kingdom.
For conducting and demonstrating that e-learning is a relevant variable to estimate the transition to the same or higher employment security as previous year (employment security variable), 108 regression analysis are implemented among variables from the created database, and taking into account that e-learning (independent and mandatory variable in our analysis) can operate in conjunction with the rest of variables (independent variables, too) to estimate the employment security variable (dependent variable).
Results allow us to observe that: i) there is a statistically significant relationship (p-value<0.01) between employment security and e-learning and only one more variable from database in 41.7% of the countries analysed (p-value<0.05 for at least one of these two independent variables); ii) there is a statistically significant relationship (p-value<0.05) in 75.0% of 12 countries (p-value<0.05 for at least one of these two independent variables); and iii) there is a statistically significant relationship (p-value<0.05) in 83.3% of countries (p-value<0.1 for at least one of these two independent variables).
Consequently, it is possible to estimate the employment security using a regression model with e-learning and only another variable. Given that, this way to calculate the employment security minimizes the cost of computing this variable. Moreover, several affinities between variables and their dimensions are found, helping to suggest a recommendation for lifelong learning programmes.