Abstract

In order to assess the chances of reintegration into the labour market, the perception of firms and their willingness to hire long-term unemployed individuals is of central importance. The first step of this project is to update the analyses of firms' willingness to employ long-term unemployed individuals based on the IAB Job Vacancy Survey. To determine firm requirements and exclusion criteria in the recruitment process, the project aims to collect firm-specific assessments of the employment-relevant characteristics of long-term unemployed individuals. Furthermore, we will investigate which measures firms consider helpful in order to counteract potential recruitment barriers. Particular attention will be paid to firms' assessments of the skills and willingness of the long-term unemployed to gain further qualifications, about which little is known in the literature to date. In a second step, we plan to look at the determinants of the stability of new employment relationships of long-term unemployed individuals. Against the background of a frequent mismatch between job requirements and the qualification level of the long-term unemployed, the role of firm compromises in particular will be examined. Studies from the IAB Job Vacancy Survey (see, e.g., IAB-Kurzbericht 06/2020) show that firms make compromises significantly more often with long-term unemployed applicants than with previously employed or short-term unemployed applicants.