Beschreibung

"This paper quantifies the importance of active job search for the probability of re‐employment, estimates the share of older job seekers that become discouraged and explore factors that may lead to discouragement. We use the sample of older unemployed welfare benefit recipients in Germany covered by the Panel Study “Labour Market and Social Security” (PASS). We find that employment transition rates are low for older job seekers: only around 11% found a job within a year. Participation in job search is an important but not a decisive factor for the transition to employment, other variables such education levels and health status are as important for the probability to transit to employment. Furthermore, more than 29.4% of individuals that did not find employment gave up the job search. We argue that a large share of these group of unemployed could be classified as discouraged. The job centre caseworkers' strategies specifically aimed at helping older job seekers to develop a new perspective in the labour market are likely to increase their probability of continuing to search for work." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))