Abstract

As part of the citizens' benefit reform, holistic support or coaching for those entitled to these benefits has been introduced as a regulatory instrument in SGB II and titled §16k SGB II. In principle, all those entitled to the citizens’ benefit and who need to improve their employability can receive such coaching. Before the citizens' benefit reform, a coaching offer was only available in the form of on-the-job coaching as part of two wage subsidy programmes titled 'integration of the long-term unemployed' according to §16e SGB II (EvL) and 'participation in the labour market' according to §16i SGB II (TaAM). Survey results on participants in both wage subsidies programmes showed high take-up rates of coaching and high satisfaction levels with various coaching aspects (Coban et al. 2022). The results indicate that coaching can provide important support that, at least from the perspective of some of the benefit recipients, also leads to an improvement in their personal situation. It is hence quite possible that with the introduction of §16k SGB II, other groups of persons (distant from the labour market) that were not supported by EvL or TaAM can also benefit from coaching. These includes, for example, young beneficiaries facing difficulties to transition from school and work. Against this background, the first research question of this project is which group benefit recipients make use of coaching according to §16k SGB II. It would be conceivable that people who are particularly distant from the labour market have a greater need for coaching and therefore make greater use of it. On the other hand, it is also likely that persons who are closer to the labour market would be more aware of the coaching offer compared to other groups and are therefore more represented among the coaching participants. Which groups have a higher probability of taking up coaching certainly also depends on the specific implementation of the coaching offer, which has not yet been clearly defined, as well as the placement strategy of job centres. In addition, the extent in which coaching is carried out by external versus job centre coaches will be examined, in addition to the amount of time spent on coaching varies for various groups (assuming such information is collected in the process data, as is the case with holistic on-the-job coaching, and is of sufficient quality). A second research question relates to the short to medium-term effects of coaching on the participants' likelihood of being employed. This question arises against the background that coaching according to §16k SGB II should improve the employability of the participants, which should ideally have a positive effect on actual employment opportunities in the medium to long term. Analyses for various subgroups of coaching participants and by type of coaching are also conceivable. The project aims to provide insights into the scope and form of coaching 16k SGB II take up. In addition, which beneficiary groups make greater use of coaching should be analysed. Finally, insights into the short to medium-term impact of coaching on integration into work and training should be gained. The analysis will use administrative data, in particular the Integrated Employment Biographies (IEB), the Basic Security Benefit History (LHG) and raw data - in particular on §16 k SGB II. For the selection analyses, we use probit or logit models. Finally, we perform the impact analyses using matching models.