Centralization of monitoring services in unemployment insurance systems

In 2020, the Swedish Public Employment Service (PES) went through a major organizational restructuring and created a new central unit to process all reports of job search activity handed in by jobseekers each month. The reform also introduced a semi-automated assessment of the monthly activity reports. The goal of the reform was to separate the job search assistance services offered at local PES offices from the monitoring of job search.

Due to the new semi-automated processing of the monthly activity reports, the public resources needed to perform monitoring activities decreased drastically. This might have improved the cost-effectiveness of monitoring systems as a whole; however, in principle it is not clear whether the policy change was able to induce positive job search incentives translating into long-term employment and job quality improvements. The aim of this project is to assess the effectiveness of the rule changes along several dimensions concerning the effect of monitoring and sanctions under the new regime, and the re-employment rates and job quality of jobseekers.

The research is funded by: Yrjö Jahnsson Foundation

Partner: Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy (IFAU)

Responsible reseacher: Stefano Lombardi, [email protected], +358 295 519 512