Activation policies in Germany

Abstract

"Although Germany has a long-standing reputation as a passive welfare state with elaborated schemes of status-protecting income replacement through social insurance in case of unemployment and a full-blown system of active labour market policies, all benefit systems had formal elements of activation and work requirement - but they had not been enforced systematically. In recent years, however, reforms of active and passive labour market policy were implemented in order to create a more activating labour market and social policy regime and awake dormant activation principles. Changing the system of unemployment insurance benefits and basic income support as well as the repertoire of active labour market policy instruments and making benefit receipt more conditional upon job search and acceptance of job offers was a major issue on the political agenda since 2003. The reform of the benefit system also involved a major overhaul of the governance of labour market policy and has far reaching implications for the logic of the German welfare state. Table 1 gives an overview of the legislative changes. All these reforms generated considerable public attention and interest from foreign oberservers. The paper illustrates the development of activation policies in terms of basic principles, instruments and target groups in Germany since 2003 and gives a preliminary assessment of its effects. From an economic point of view, the major issue is the effectiveness and efficiency of activation policies in terms of bringing the jobless into work and from a social point of tackling poverty and social exclusion." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

Cite article

Konle-Seidl, R. (2009): Activation policies in Germany. In: Korea Labour Institute (Hrsg.) (2009): Activation policies and the performance of employment services, p. 59-117.