Should the unemployed care for the elderly? The effect of subsidized occupational and further training in elderly care

Demographic change implies an increasing demand for elderly care and a lower labor force potential at the same time. Training unemployed workers in care occupations might mitigate this problem. This study analyzes the effectiveness of subsidized training in elderly care professions for the unemployed in Germany over 12 years. We find that subsidized further training and retraining in elderly care improves the employment chances of unemployed workers substantially in the long term. Moreover, a high share of these re-employed workers remain in the care sector. A high percentage of parttime work and conditional wage gains for only certain retraining participants indicate shortcomings in the quality of employment. However, subsidized training seems to be an adequate measure to re-employ unemployed workers in the elderly care sector and to narrow the gap between demand and supply in elderly care.