Welcome to the homepage of  the Welsh Economy and Labour Market  Evaluation and Research Centre (WELMERC). 

WELMERC is a part of  the School of Business and Economics of Swansea University . It was established as a result of funding from the European Social Fund, with the aim of providing evidence-based economic policy advice.

During the first phase of WELMERC from 1st August 2002 to July 2005, the Centre produced 12 Research Reports in the areas of inactivity, rates of return to education, benchmarking, lifelong learning, gender segregation and minimum wages. In addition, it organised seminars, awareness  raising workshops and conferences.  A Steering Group was set up at the outset of the project to oversee the work of the Centre.

WELMERC has four main objectives:-

• To provide dynamic benchmarks for each Welsh Unitary Authority as a base from which to monitor the effectiveness of Objective One funding;
• To analyse and report on trends in economic data relevant to the Welsh Labour Market such as population profiles, migration flows, skills and qualifications, inactivity, employment, earnings, GDP growth rates and business information;
• To analyse existing and new data sets including the Welsh boosts to the Labour Force Survey and British Household Panel Survey in order to inform policies relating to education and training, earnings, unemployment and inactivity, labour market discrimination and social inclusion; 
• To undertake evaluation analysis of Objective One spending on terms of impacts on labour market activity and value for money.

The proposed areas of investigation during the second phase of WELMERC 1st August 2005 to 30th June 2008 include (project manager in parenthesis):

• Benchmarking and Objective One analysis (Professor P Sloane);
• Returns to Education (Dr. N C O'Leary);
• Equal Opportunities and Social Exclusion (Dr. R. Arabsheibani);
• Migration & Commuting (Professor D. H. Blackaby);
• Self-employment (Dr. P. L. Latreille);
• Basic Skills (Professor J. G. Treble);
• Disabilities (M. K. Jones);
• Barriers to Employment (Professor P. D. Murphy)
• Sustainability (R. J. Jones)