Employment services

Register with your state employment service. These offices provide a clearinghouse for matching applicants and jobs. They also offer job skills training, job-search workshops, and individual job counseling. They tend to be more effective for those seeking middle- and lower-level opportunities. 

Winter Soren, Peter Dinesen and Peter May (2007) Implementation Regimes and Street-Level Bureaucrats Employment Service Delivery in Denmark Paper Prepared for the Public Management Conference Tucson, Arizona 25-27 Octorber Woodside Kenneth (1998) The acceptability and visibility of policy instruments in Peters Guy and Frans Nispen (1998) Public Policy Instruments - Evaluating the Tools of Public administration. Edward Elgar Cheltenham. 

Women were encouraged to use the Association s employment service to take up the Association s special insurance and annuity scheme to participate in the training programme involving the interchange of women apprentices between retail and hospital services and to start their own businesses, preferably as a joint venture between two or three women of congenial tastes. 50... 

The local PES offices are foremost responsible for the unemployment insurance benefit (UB I) recipients. Within this regime the Federal Employment Service (BA)... 

The use of market mechanisms by outsourcing placement services to external providers through placement vouchers or via subsidised temporary work (PSA) has been implemented as a complementary option to improve efficiency and effectiveness of core employment services (Konle-Seidl 2005a). The need for more individualised services for hard-to-place unemployed persons, however, opens up broader options for contracting out employment and welfare service provision. In this sense the BA started a new pilot in July 2007 to test successful context criteria for a better involvement of private agencies. The step to a further privatisation of the German PES takes the British Employment Zones as an example. 

The introduction of Unemployment Benefit II in 2005 was combined with the creation of joint bodies of BA and the municipalities - the ARGE consortia - that are now in charge of administrating ALG II and designing employment services for benefit recipients in all districts except for regions where the municipalities opted for taking over the complete responsibility and for the districts with continued division of responsibilities. 

While the federal burden of funding of ALG II, related employment services and housing costs went up, municipal responsibility for the implementation of labour market policy increased. The municipalities can free-ride in their decisions at the expense of the state budget. As the municipalities maintain the financial responsibility for income support for persons who are not able to work (social assistance), the municipalities have an incentive to shift costs by classifying persons as being able to work who would otherwise obtain municipal social assistance. Indeed, in 2005 more than 90% of the former SA recipients were assessed to be capable of working and therefore transferred to the federal funded ALG II system. 

At the end of 2007, a fresh process of reform has been started along the new president s promise to merge ANPE and the ASSEDIC system. The two institutions UNEDIC (including the ASSEDIC) and ANPE merged meanwhile in a sole one (Loi n° 2008-126 du 13 Fevrier 2008 on the reform of the public employment service, JO n° 38 du 14 Fevrier 2008). 

Over the same period, significant management reforms occurred in the Public Employment Service (PES, see below). The latest period of the implementation of the PARE, now the mainstream benefit and form of activation , has also seen a very significant increase of sanctions for the unemployed, while a new decrease of the benefit, decided in December 2002 and to be implemented fully in 2004, was eventually cancelled after the conservative government lost the 2004 regional elections. 

The public employment service (service public de I emploi, SPE)... 

The state, the employment service ANPE, the AFP A,62 UNEDIC and the ASSEDICs thereby stand for the service public and constitute the first level of the SPE. This service may be supported by the territorial authorities (collectivites territoriales). Together, they were supposed to form the maisons d emploi, which are set up in employment pools (bassins d emploi).63 These two components of the SPE are backed by public institutions, but also by private-sector organisations that participate in SPE and support occupational reintegration activities. 

Finally, an agreement between the employer and the public employment service (ANPE) must be concluded prior to or, at the latest, concurrently with the engagement of an unemployed person as a prerequisite for the granting of state support and payment exemptions. The period of such an agreement must not exceed the duration of a fixed-term subsidised contract in the case of a permanent subsidised contract, it generally may not last longer than 24 months. 

A policy-strategy, aimed at preventing that welfare claimants do not want or cannot work, by the use of a combination of on one hand in-work activities and employability services, and on the other hand sanctions on benefits. 

The effects of Work First are directed towards two main goals first, the prevention of entry into the welfare system, and second, the return to the labour market of the participants. Combining these effects will thus have a positive impact on the number of welfare claimants who will return to the labour market due to Work First. Nevertheless, Work First spurred some heated debates in the Netherlands since its introduction, mainly concerning its preventive effect. Many questions were raised concerning those individuals who chose not to make a welfare claim due to their obligatory participation in a Work First programme. However, these concerns were partially contained by the inclusion of employability services in the projects, so that projects would not only focus on the threat-effects they create, but also on their positive incentives side. 

In four steps a market system arrangement was introduced, replacing the traditional hierarchically structured employment services, embracing ideas of contestability and marketability (see paragraph 3). 

Arbeidsvoorzieningswet (Act on Public Employment Services) Tripartism Demonopolisation PES Decentralisation of employment offices... 

Structuur Uitvoering Werk en Inkomen (Structure Inplementation Work and Income, SUWI) Foundation of one unemployment benefit Agency (UWV) Foundation of one-stop shops (CWI) Abolition of PES, foundation of Kliq Obligation to tender all employment services Introduction of a market with for profit providers... 

Wet Werk en inkomen naar Arbeidsver-mogen (Act on work and Income according to labour capacity) Obligation of employers to offer employment services to disabled... 

Table 13. Budget for purchasing reintegration/employment services 2000-2005 in Euro...

In a 2006 research commissioned by the peak body of providers in the Netherlands (Boaborea), the effectiveness of employment services ( trajectories ) as well as the costs and benefits have been calculated.95 This research shows effectiveness of employment services and points at the importance of the right moment to start offering these services ( trajectories ). Interestingly, the moment turns out to differ depending on the target group involved. Early intervention for example pays of for people on social assistance, but not for short term unemployed (see Table 16). The optimal intervention moment for disabled is earlier than for unemployed. 

Table 16. Percentages of people returned to work, with and without employment services by moment of intervention, by benefit group...

For people on welfare trajectories turn out to increase substantially the chances to get a job, especially when the services start immediately. A so-called trajectory that starts immediately after entrance of benefit increases a person s chances by seven percentage points to 28%. When the employment services start after 6 months, the increase is only five percent points. This means that after 2 years 26% will have gotten a job. With services starting after 1 year, results are no more than two percentage points, adding up to 23% (see Table 16). 

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