The German Employment Agency's measures for integrating the long‐term unemployed with multiple constraints into the labour market: Some individual experiences

Abstract

AbstractNearly a decade after the Lisbon Strategy's formulation, long‐term unemployed individuals in Germany seem to lack opportunities on the labour market that their short‐term unemployed counterparts enjoy. Despite Germany's robust economic development and declining unemployment rates in the past, the German Federal Employment Agency (Bundesagentur für Arbeit) has nevertheless identified the ‘hardening of the long‐term unemployment situation’. This article illuminates the institutional measures taken by the BA, along with their promotional and inhibitory effects, as analysed in narrative interviews with long‐term unemployed individuals who transitioned into Germany's primary labour market despite multiple constraints. Although the BA provides a range of measures to promote integration into the labour market, the people affected have no binding claim to those services and measures, and many of the long‐term unemployed individuals that we interviewed revealed problematic consequences of institutional support received and described strategies for securing employment apart from the BA's institutional means.