The German labor market: still adjusting badly?

In the late nineties, Germany was often seen as a laggard with respect to labor market and welfare state reforms with institutional inertia being reflected in notoriously sluggish employment growth and rising unemployment. Recent years, however, saw a complex sequence of reforms with regard to labor market-related institutions such as labor market regulation, social benefits, active and activating labor market policies and attempts to reduce the burden of payroll taxes and