Active labour market policy and direct job creation in Germany: Achievements, challenges, and pitfalls

Abstract

Direct job creation has long been a classic instrument of labour market policy, pursuing a number of potential goals. Recently in Germany, policies of this type have come under growing pressure. This is partly due to the increasingly scarce resources available for job creation measures. Taken together with the continual policy reforms of the past few years and the growing pressure on public employment agencies to promote measures of non-subsidized labour market inclusion, this means that the area of direct job creation has come under close scrutiny and forced to justify its approach. In this article, we present our arguments for a further development of local authority concepts with a programmatic segmentation under the headings of ‘structurally effective direct job creation’ and ‘socially inclusive direct job creation’.