Open Access

Markus Hilpert, Andreas Huber

• Recent developments in the labour market have led to a good many regions currently finding themselves in a critical situation in which they need to explore new avenues of implementation. Regional labour-market management represents one possible strategy for moving incrementally towards a new practice of implementation-oriented local labourmarket policy. Clearly, no form of „bottom-up” employment policy can replace the labourmarket policies of the Federal or of Land governments. However, the regions do have an important contribution to make and can add vital impulses both to labour-market policy and to the general development of economic competitiveness within their region. Over the foreseeable future there is every reason to expect a continuation of the need for an implementation-oriented, regionalised labour-market policy. Finally, such a policy needs to be organised as a learning process and to be regularly reviewed, refined and improved.