Förderung der abschlussorientierten beruflichen Weiterbildung: Entwicklung von Zugangszahlen und Teilnahmestrukturen vor und nach der Einführung der Weiterbildungsprämien im Jahr 2016

"Since August 1, 2016, individuals who participate in and successfully complete a further vocational training program aiming for a certified vocational degree (retraining) that is subsidized under Section 81 of the German Social Code III (SGB III), are entitled to bonuses. These bonuses amount to 1.000 Euro for a passed intermediate and 1.500 Euro for a passed final exam. They were introduced under the assumption that financial incentives can play a role in training participation of unemployed and employed workers. The bonuses are intended to foster the take up of retraining and to reduce premature drop out. Because of the design of the bonus and the way it was introduced, it is not possible to determine the causal effects of the bonus without strong modelling assumptions. The main reason is the difficulty of finding a suitable control group, which cannot be easily constructed ex post. To provide descriptive evidence concerning the use of retraining, this report paper documents the development of entries into such courses and disaggregates these according to various criteria. The analyses cover the period of two years before to four years after the introduction of the bonuses in August 2016. Over the years retraining accounts for about 20 percent of all subsidized training courses. The absolute number of entries into retraining peaks in 2019 at around 75,000. In total, there has been a slight upward trend since 2014. Since 2019, the number of employed workers starting a retraining course has increased, which is likely due to the Qualification Opportunities Act (“Qualifizierungschancengesetz”), which came into force in 2019 and extended the funding opportunities for employed workers. At the start of the pandemic in spring 2020 there was a slump in entries in all training courses and retraining. In relation to the annual average number of unemployed, the retraining intensity increased in particular in the years 2016 to 2019 (although it declined again in 2020 due to the pandemic). However, this may have other causes than the introduction of the bonus. In addition to an increase in the number of participants, the bonus might also affect the composition of the participants. In the course of the years 2014 to 2019, the absolute numbers of persons with foreign citizenship, men, retraining cases founded by SGB III, and employees enrolled in retraining increased. Since the bonus is paid after successful completion of the intermediate or final exam, it might also create incentives to not prematurely drop out of the subsidized training. In the years 2014 to 2018, there was a slight decline in the share of successfully completed measures across the entry cohorts (excluding data from Job Centres administered solely by the municipalities). In the case of early terminations, a slight increase can be seen in the entry cohorts of the years 2014 to 2018. Again, this evidence is descriptive and cannot be interpreted causally." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))