Joachim Wolff (Institute for Employment Research)
Stefan Tübbicke and Markus Wolf
We study the effects of the first meeting between unemployed welfare recipients and their caseworker. Our analysis uses administrative data on first-time entrants to the German welfare system and tracks their employment trajectories over five years. The data come from a large subset of offices that report the date of the first scheduled meeting and whether it took place. To identify the meeting effect, we instrument whether the meeting takes place with weather conditions on the day of the scheduled meeting. Instrumental variable estimates show that the meeting persistently increases jobseekers days in employment and their earnings over the five years following welfare entry. Additional analyses indicate that the meeting leads to one additional caseworker meeting and increases the probability of receiving a vacancy referral within the first year after welfare entry. It also raises the probability of finding stable employment. Heterogeneity analyses show that long-run effects are larger in offices with lower caseloads and a smaller share of caseworkers on fixed-term contracts, and are driven by jobseekers with comparatively strong initial employment prospects.