Training the Caseworker

Caseworkers play an important role in shaping jobseekers’ employment outcomes through counseling and monitoring. The authors of the paper presented in this ZEW Research Seminar study the introduction of a unified counseling framework in Germany that affected about 1.2 million unemployed welfare recipients. Its core element was a training program for caseworkers designed to raise counseling quality. Using administrative data and a differences-in-differences design, they estimate that the reform increased days in regular employment by about 6 % over eight years. Effects are driven by increases in skilled rather than unskilled employment, and are concentrated in high-unemployment districts. They conclude that training raised caseworkers’ productivity and thus jobseekers’ employment prospects.