The German government is planning to reform Hartz IV by replacing it with a simpler and more accessible system known as Bürgergeld. Using a random-based survey of eight job centers in North Rhine-Westphalia, this Weekly Report considers the perspectives of the long-term unemployed: What do they...

Im Januar 2023 hat in Deutschland das Bürgergeld das System der Grundsicherung abgelöst, begleitet von zahlreichen politischen und medialen Kontroversen. Nach einem Jahr Bürgergeldreform wurden Beschäftigte in sieben Jobcentern in Nordrhein-Westfalen befragt, um eine erste Bilanz zur...

Mit dem Bürgergeld plant die Ampel-Koalition eine Reform des Hartz-IV-Systems mit Erleichterungen für Leistungsbeziehende. Dieser Wochenbericht nimmt auf Basis einer zufallsbasierten Befragung in acht Jobcentern in Nordrhein-Westfalen die Perspektive von Langzeitarbeitslosen ein: Wie schätzen...

Für das Gros der Bevölkerung sind Erwerbseinkommen die zentrale materielle Ressource während des aktiven Berufslebens. Sie bestimmen nicht nur maßgeblich die gegenwärtigen finanziellen Möglichkeiten der Beschäftigten, sondern beispielsweise auch deren künftige Rentenansprüche. Das...

This paper studies the predictability of long-term unemployment (LTU) and analyzes its main determinants using rich administrative data in Sweden. Compared to using standard socio-demographic variables, the predictive power more than doubles when leveraging the rich data environment. The largest...

Employment and wage subsidies are used to combat long-term unemployment, yet there is little research to guide the design of such programs. Discontinuities in the design and implementation of wage subsidies under the Swedish New Start Jobs-policy allow us to study effects of both subsidy rate...

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...

Does regional unemployment increase or rather decrease entrepreneurial activity? Although this question has been hotly debated among researchers for decades the answers yielded so far are ambiguous and inconclusive. The paper proposes an innovative approach that takes not only interregional...

This paper estimates the causal effect of long-term unemployment on wages. Job search theory implies that if Unemployment Insurance (UI) extensions do not affect wages conditional on the month of unemployment exit, then reservation wages do not bind on average. Then, UI extensions affect mean...

Population aging in many developed countries has motivated some governments to provide wage subsidies to employers for hiring or retaining older workers. The subsidies are intended to compensate for the gap between the pay and productivity of older workers, which may discourage their hiring. A...