Während auf europäischer Ebene eine Stärkung von Mindestsicherungssystemen im Rahmen der Umsetzung der Europäischen Säule sozialer Rechte diskutiert wird, ist die deutsche Diskussion im Vorfeld der Bundestagswahl 2021 durch unterschiedlich weitreichende Vorschläge zur Reform des...

Hiring subsidies are widely used to create (stable) employment for the long-term unemployed. This paper exploits the abolition of a hiring subsidy targeted at long-term unemployed jobseekers older than 45 years of age in Belgium to evaluate its effectiveness in the short and medium run. Based on...

This paper presents an average treatment effect analysis of Spain's furlough program during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using 2020 labour force quarterly microdata, we construct a counterfactual made of comparable nonfurloughed individuals who lost their jobs and apply propensity score...

Unemployment in Europe is excessively high on average, and is divergent across countries and population groups within countries. On the one hand, over the past decades, national governments have implemented incomplete institutional reforms to amend dysfunctional labor markets. On the other hand,...

In Germany, older unemployed people aged 58 or more years have been exempt from a fundamental principle of activating labour market policy until 2007: They have been entitled to unemployment benefit payments until taking up retirement pension without having to seek new employment (Section 428 of...

This note examines the balance of activation strategies in OECD countries, where this type of policy approach has a long tradition. Countries share the objective of strengthening employment and reducing benefit dependency and vulnerability among the working-age population, but the balance of...

Workers whose jobs are affected by structural change and digitization are required to continuously adapt their vocational skills to the requirements of the labor market. This adaptation is also essential for the competitiveness of their employer firms. The German legislature addressed this issue...

This text focuses on long-term unemployment in the German labor market caused by insufficient work skills capabilities and discusses the deficits of the current policy in improving the situation of job seekers who are repeatedly rejected in their efforts to find a job. For both the German...

Work impairment is an increasing concern in advanced economies, particularly among young people. Activation, rather than passively providing economic support, is often regarded as the preferred strategy for addressing this issue. However, little is known about which measures are effective for...

This paper comparatively analyzes strategies of German Jobcenters to bring native and immigrant job seekers into employment. It focuses on clients who receive means-tested basic income for the unemployed, based on data from the Panel Study Labour Market and Social Security (PASS) from year 2015...