Vermittlungsgutscheine: Forschungsstand und Forschungspotenzial

"This report provides an overview of findings on the utilization and effects of private placement vouchers and discusses potential for further research. In Germany, public employment agencies and public job centres can issue activation and placement vouchers that allow unemployed individuals to utilize the services of private agencies for labour market services. One type of these vouchers is a private placement voucher. It aims at private placement providers that place individuals in employment subject to social security contributions, whereby services are only remunerated in case of a successful placement. Individuals that are entitled to unemployment benefits and who after six weeks of unemployment have not been placed within a period of three months, are legally entitled to such a voucher. The remuneration for successful placement amounts to 2500 Euro, but can be increased to 3000 Euro for the long-term unemployed and individuals with disability. The first installment of 1250 Euro is paid after an employment duration of six weeks and the remainder after six months of employment. Some further conditions apply to the employment relationship. The use of private placement vouchers both in terms of issued and redeemed (i.e. with approved first installment) vouchers has been declining in recent years. The number of issued vouchers decreased from 333,000 to about 47,000 per year between 2013 and 2020. While in 2013, about 42,800 vouchers were redeemed, this number had dropped to around 6,900 in 2020. Over the entire observation period, the fraction of vouchers with approved second installment among vouchers with approved first installment remained fairly constant at around 56 percent. Hence, more than half of all employment relationships resulting from the use of private placement vouchers lasted for at least half a year. Individuals who receive and redeem a voucher, respectively, disproportionally often belong to groups with disproportionally better employment chances compared to the stock of unemployed. For instance, individuals aged 55 or older, the long-term unemployed and unemployment benefit II recipients are underrepresented among individuals receiving and redeeming a voucher, respectively. Earlier causal analyses using the method of “statistical twins” show that receiving a voucher increases unemployed individuals’ chances to contract unsubsidized employment subject to social security contributions. Analyses of the quality of these employment spells suggest, however, that individuals redeeming a voucher are more likely to be employed as temporary agency workers and have jobs that, on average, require lower qualifications and pay lower wages compared to individuals that receive a voucher, but find employment without utilizing it. Replicating existing studies using more recent data is not expected to lead to new insights. For further analysis, the authors suggest to issue private placement vouchers to randomly assigned individuals in selected public employment agencies and job centres. The random assignment of individuals eliminates selection into the receipt of vouchers. The group of individuals who is issued a private placement voucher and the group who is not would therefore be comparable both in terms of observable as well as unobservable characteristics. This would allow identifying clean causal effects of the receipt of private placement vouchers." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))