Routine-intensive occupations have been declining in many countries, but how does this affect individual workers’ careers if this decline is particularly severe in their local labor market? This paper uses administrative data from Germany and a matched difference-in-differences approach to show that the individual costs of job loss strongly depend on the task-bias of regional structural change. Workers displaced from routine manual occupations have substantially higher and more persistent employment and wage losses in regions where such occupations decline the most. Regional and occupational mobility partly serve as an adjustment mechanism, but come at high cost as these switches also involve losses in firm wage premia. Non-displaced workers, by contrast, remain largely unaffected by structural change.

In this paper we analyze the effects of a German job creation scheme (JCS) on the social integration and well-being of long-term unemployed individuals. Using linked survey and administrative data for participants and a group of matched non-participants, we find significant positive effects of being employed within this program. They are larger for individuals with health impairments and above-average duration of welfare dependence. The program effects decline over time, which cannot be explained by decreasing levels of well-being and social integration of the participants. Instead, this decrease is driven by a rising share of controls who find a job and catch up to similar outcome levels as program participants. Overall, our results suggest that JCSs can be an efficient labor market policy instrument to improve the quality of life of the long-term unemployed.

Langzeitarbeitslosigkeit ist ein soziales Problem, das auch in wirtschaftlich guten Zeiten nie ganz verschwindet. Die Integration in Beschaftigung ist vor allem fur altere Personen, die bereits sehr lange Perioden von Arbeitslosigkeit erfahren haben, nicht einfach, mit entsprechenden negativen Folgen fur die soziale Teilhabe. Offentlich geforderte Beschaftigung fur Langzeitarbeitslose kann jedoch nach einer aktuellen Studie eines Forschungskonsortiums von IAQ, ZOOM, SOKO und ZEW Mannheim helfen, die soziale Teilhabe der geforderten Personen zu erhohen und auch effizient gestaltet werden – insbesondere wenn es gelingt, solche Programme auf die Gruppe der Langzeitarbeitslosen ohne Chancen auf eine ungeforderte Beschaftigung zu konzentrieren.