How effective are hiring subsidies in reducing long-term unemployment among prime-aged jobseekers? Evidence from Belgium

Sam Desiere and Bart Cockx

IZA Journal of Labor Policy, 2022, vol. 12, issue 1, 38

Abstract: Hiring subsidies are widely used to create (stable) employment for the long-term unemployed. This paper exploits the abolition of a hiring subsidy targeted at long-term unemployed jobseekers older than 45 years of age in Belgium to evaluate its effectiveness in the short and medium run. Based on a triple-difference methodology, the hiring subsidy is shown to increase the job-finding rate by 13% without any evidence of spillover effects. This effect is driven by a positive effect on individuals with at least a bachelor's degree. However, the hiring subsidy mainly creates temporary short-lived employment: eligible jobseekers are not more likely to find employment that lasts at least 12 consecutive months compared with ineligible jobseekers.

Keywords: hiring subsidies; long-term unemployment; prime-aged jobseekers; triple difference; temporary help agencies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H22 J08 J18 J23 J38 J64 J65 J68 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.2478/izajolp-2022-0003 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:vrs:izajlp:v:12:y:2022:i:1:p:38:n:2

DOI: 10.2478/izajolp-2022-0003

Access Statistics for this article

IZA Journal of Labor Policy is currently edited by Denis Fougère, Juan F. Jimeno and Núria Rodríguez-Planas

More articles in IZA Journal of Labor Policy from Sciendo & Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().