ABSTRACT
Labour market careers of young people are regulated by the State through an active employment policy. This chapter presents the range of public measures available from 1985 to 1992 in Spain and France focusing on their quantitative importance, their generosity, their relation to social rights; and the evaluation of their effects on young people's way and pace of integration into stable employment relations. In France, the most important group of employment measures for young people are those that aim to provide young people aged 16 to 25 with a vocational qualification through an employment contract alternating work in an enterprise with theoretical training in public or private education courses. Unlike in France, subsidised employment measures not directly targeted at young people were and are of great quantitative relevance for young people's employment in Spain. The labour market reform of 1984 enlarged the conditions under which fixed-term contracts are allowed.
