Unemployment benefit II sanctions: Below the subsistence level

Abstract

"For all recipients affected, sanctions under unemployment benefit II mean living at least temporarily below the socio-cultural subsistence level. In Germany, jobless welfare recipients younger than 25 years of age are subject to particularly tough sanctions applied by the employment offices. In contrast to older welfare recipients, benefits for young recipients are reduced by 100 percent for a term of up to three months the first time obligations are neglected (e.g. not participating in a training measure). If violations are repeated, the payments for housing and heating provided by the welfare office will be cancelled too. The incidence of sanctions for young jobless welfare recipients is much more frequent than for older recipients (10.1% compared to 3.2% in December 2009). <br> Caseworkers at the employment offices are the ones that have to enforce these strict sanctions against the young unemployed. When asked about their opinion on the current regulations in qualitative interviews, they said they were in general in favour of having the possibility of sanctioning uncooperative recipients. However, they criticized the strict sanctions against young welfare recipients, especially those applying to cases of repeated violation. The caseworkers considered these too strict. Moreover, they worried that in some cases these hard sanctions might undermine their efforts towards the successful integration of young benefit recipients into the labour market." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

Cite article

Götz, S., Ludwig-Mayerhofer, W. & Schreyer, F. (2010): Sanktionen im SGB II: Unter dem Existenzminimum. (IAB-Kurzbericht 10/2010), Nürnberg, 8 p.