Abstract

This project studies jobcenters’ activation and counseling strategies for different groups of means-tested unemployment benefit recipients. Important focus groups for the study include people with comparatively few employment opportunities, for instance older benefit recipients, those without a vocational degree, or benefit recipients with a migration background (see Achatz and Trappmann, 2011). The project analyses how jobcenters address employment obstacles specific to these groups. Moreover, previous research on active labor market programs indicates lower program participation rates for women with partners than for singles (Kopf and Zabel, 2017). The current project intends to provide more in-depth insight into activation strategies for women with partners. A further step of the project relates jobcenters’ activation and counseling strategies to benefit recipients’ evaluations of their jobcenter contacts. The research question in this context is whether different groups of benefit recipients evaluate their jobcenter contacts differently, and whether diverging counseling and activation strategies chosen by jobcenters for different groups might explain differences in benefit recipients’ jobcenter evaluations. Finally, we aim to analyze whether jobcenters’ activation and counseling strategies influence employment opportunities for different groups of benefit recipients.
The analyses for this project are based on data from the Panel Study Labor Market and Social Security (PASS). Data from the PASS provide good options for identifying various groups of benefit recipients, for instance by providing more precise information on migration background than administrative data. Moreover, the PASS provides extensive information on jobcenter counseling for benefit recipients, for instance on the frequency of counseling meetings, on labor market integration agreements, and on referrals to municipal counseling programs. In addition, we can jointly analyze PASS and administrative data. The initial analyses on jobcenters’ activation and counseling strategies as well as on benefit recipients’ evaluations of their jobcenter contacts will be descriptive. Multivariate models will be used to analyze the relationship between jobcenters’ activation and counseling and benefit recipients’ labor market success.