Langzeitleistungsbezug und Langzeitarbeitslosigkeit: Definitionen, Quantitäten, Strukturen

In light of the ongoing high prevalence of long-term unemployment and welfare benefit receipt, this article draws a detailed picture of welfare recipients and long-term unemployed to supplement the information provided by official statistics. Not only looking at durations of (official) unemployment but at periods with and without gainful employment it can be shown that there is a polarisation of welfare recipients in terms of their past and current labour market participation. On the one hand, there are substantial numbers of recipients who are employed or whose last employment ended less than one year ago. On the other hand, there exists a significant group of recipients having had no employment experience in the last four years. Within the population of long-term benefit recipients two distinct groups can be identified: long-term recipients who are also long-term unemployed. This group consists of a disproportionally high share of older people with poor health. The other group of long-term recipients is not unemployed because its members are either employed or not available for the labour market. This group is made up mainly of recipients living in households with children.