Halving the unemployment benefits period, and the acute assistance package

The purpose of this study is to provide an snapshot picture of employment efforts by job centres and unemployment insurance funds. A series of qualitative interviews with employees from job centres and unemployment insurance funds has helped elucidate how job centres and insurance funds, respectively, have managed the reduction in the unemployment benefits period to half of its original length, and how they have managed to implement the special acute assistance package for unemployed people offered at the end of the unemployment benefits period.
The study reveals that shortening the unemployment benefits period has not brought about any general changes in employment efforts. However, the employees at job centres and unemployment funds are attentive to the the shorter period in which the unemployed people have to find a job, and this has led to earlier and more intensive efforts to assist the unemployed people.
This special effort has therefore helped ensure greater focus and coherence in assistance for the individual through, among other things, a personal job consultant and conversations between the unemployed person, unemployment insurance funds and job centres.