Wer nimmt die Berufsberatung im Erwerbsleben (BBiE) in Anspruch? Eine Prozessdatenanalyse

"Against the background of digitalization and demographic change, vocational retraining and career reorientation are becoming increasingly important. To support employees in their professional orientation, in recent years the Federal Employment Agency (BA) has developed various advisory services. Counseling in working life (BBiE) is aimed at people who have already entered the workforce. The key objective is to help people to better assess their own career prospects. The target groups for career advice in working life are primarily employed persons, particularly those with low qualifications, who are about to embark on a new career or reorientation and persons who are about to return to work. In addition, the service is aimed at unemployed persons within the legal scope of unemployment insurance who have previous professional experience and an extended need for vocational guidance and orientation. This research report is the first to use research data newly made available concerning the people receiving advice. These data are linked to the Integrated Employment Biographies (IEB) of the IAB and the Establishment History Panel (BHP). Among other things, the IEB contains information on periods of employment subject to social insurance contributions, registered job searches, receipt of unemployment benefit and unemployment benefit II as well as periods in labor market policy measures. Information on the employing company can be supplemented from the BHP. As BBiE addressed different target groups during the period investigated, the report distinguishes people who, at the time of the first counseling meeting, were a) employed and subject to social insurance contributions, b) unemployed within the legal scope of unemployment insurance (SGB III) or c) in further positions (including potential re-entrants to the labor market). For the employed, the reference group consists of people who were employed on a reference date. The reference sample for the unemployed contains new entrants to unemployment. For persons in alternative labor market states, no reference group can be formed, as information in the administrative data is missing at the time of counseling for most individuals in this group. The report examines 45,000 employed persons, just under 9,000 unemployed persons and around 17,500 other persons who attended at least one initial counseling appointment in 2021 and who fulfilled a number of additional conditions. For the analysis sample, compared to the reference groups this implies approximate participation rates of 0.16% for employed persons and 0.64% for unemployed persons in the unemployment insurance system. The report then examines the characteristics of the three groups of people receiving guidance, for the first two groups also in comparison with the reference groups. In addition to individual characteristics, characteristics of the last or current employer are also available. The results show a strong age effect: BBiE seems to target younger people: In all three groups – the share of people up to 35 years of age is higher among those receiving advice than in the corresponding reference groups, while for people aged 46 and over it is significantly lower. A second strong effect can be seen with regard to gender: depending on the group, the proportion of women among those receiving advice is between 50% and two thirds and higher than the proportion of women in the reference groups. Employees who received advice had a significantly lower gross daily wage (measured by the median) in their current job than people in the reference group and more often worked part-time. In addition, there are a number of smaller differences between the employed and unemployed and the respective reference groups." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))