Welfare state analyses of the last decade have argued that a shift is taking place from the welfare state to a social investment state (Esping-Andersen, 2000), or in Gilbert's terms, an ‘enabling state’ (2005). In the social investment state, the focus is on human capital investment through improved training and education across the life course. Empirical evidence for this shift is sought in the presence of activation or active labour market policies implemented by welfare states in an attempt to reduce dependence on social protection programmes and to increase labour market participation. A recent article by Hudson and Kühner (2009), in contrast, argues that there is little quantitative evidence to suggest that a shift from social protection to social investment is taking place. But the authors rely on OECD data, which details government expenditures, thereby missing a significant proportion of investment in education and training provided for outside the welfare state by employers or collective agreements. As this chapter will show, the Dutch case makes it clear that protection of a new social risk – insufficient employability – is possible even without the creation of collective welfare state protection, namely through collective bargaining.

Employability policy can be related to a number of social risks, but the social risk being looked at here is insufficient employability, expressed in a lack of schooling or training, which complicates labour market mobility or can lead to a labour market exit. As noted in an earlier chapter, the shift to lengthier educational trajectories and an increased emphasis on individual responsibility in obtaining skills and training places low-educated individuals or individuals with outdated skills in an increasingly precarious position (Elchardus et al, 2003). At the same time, increased labour market flexibility places more demands on individual workers to be adaptable, flexible and mobile. Individuals with insufficient employability are likely to have a greater risk of not only unemployment, but also decreased job mobility or difficulty in returning to employment following a labour market absence. Insufficient employability, then, is a broad, diffuse risk that has gained increased attention as a ‘new’ social risk.

The concept of employability developed as a business concept in the US during the 1990s and gained popularity in the Netherlands in the mid-1990s.