Local Employment Observatory (OLE)

Observatorio Local de Empleo [Local Employment Observatory, OLE] is a Research Centre of HUELVA University focused on socio-economic and environmental studies.

It was created in 1994 and co-funded by ESF (Community Initiative URBAN) as a strategic monitoring tool to support public and private institutions as well as social and economical agents dealing with local challenges. Its methodology —research-action and participatory assessment— allows collaborative actors to handle specific policies linked to socio-economical integration and local development in a sustainable approach.

OLE is connected to the General Economical and Statistics Department of HUELVA University. Its members belong to the “Research Techniques and Economical Development” Research Group (Grupo de Investigación Técnicas de Investigación y Desarrollo Económico), registered as TIDE-SEJ 162.

Since 1992, OLE is closely working with the centre ThéMA-MTI of the University of Franche-Comté (France). Horizontal and permanent collaboration between both teams allows the development of a joint working system and the tools and methodologies share to apply research results.

Nowadays, OLE is composed by a team of 11 researchers, 4 of them are PhD and, a technical staff composed by 7 technicians that support the researchers (a manager, a computer expert, a statistician, a documentalist, two research assistants and an administration secretary). This Technical Team is enlarged in case of specific projects needs : for each project there can be hirings of specialised people. Besides, OLE has a broad multidisciplinary team of external collaborating researchers, who take part in some projects carried out in this centre.