Evaluation of a Federal Labour Market Programme “Social inclusion in the labour market”

The Federal Programme “Social Inclusion in the Labour Market” aims to improve the social inclusion of long-term benefit recipients who are far from the labour market. The federal programme was directed at people who had either received benefit payments for at least four years according to German law SGB II, who had health restrictions, and/or lived with minor children in a community of need. The programme was launched in 2015 and ran until 31/12/2018. Over the entire period, approximately 21,000 people in 195 job centres participated in the program. Hence the federal programme was implemented in almost half of the job centres nationwide. The subject of the evaluation is an analysis of the implementation and effectiveness of the federal programme. In this context it is examined whether the federal programme increases social inclusion of the participants and, if so, to what concrete causes this can be attributed. Analysis of the short-term effects of the federal programme (7 months after programme entry) shows positive effects for all examined dimensions of social inclusion on programme participants compared to control persons. The main reasons for the positive effects are the resource gains from income earned, the long duration of the subsidized employment relationship (in comparison with usual subsidy measures) and the satisfaction of the participants with regard to their activities at work.