Study title

Apart from a few individual studies the labor market and it’s segregation, the relation between supply and demand, employment structure, and unemployment is until today not analyzed in its historical dimension. The same applies to the history of labor market policy. The present study’s aim is to fill this gap by describing the most important elements of the labor market policy: the employment service, the job creation, and the unemployment benefit. The researcher addresses one of the most important problems of the modern, on the intense division of labor based economy: the labor market coverage with highly skilled workers. The reason for the complexity of this task lies in the strong segmentation of the labor market (numerous sub-markets and sectors with different requirements on qualifications) and – since the industrialization – the fact, that the labor market is in a process of constant, sometimes short term changes. To manage this situation, market transparency to the largest possible extent is necessary, which is a central field of the employment service’s responsibility. To this basic function (the supply of the labor market with adequate skilled workers, called by Anselm Faust ‘market function’) further important functions are attached, for example the prevention of unemployment. The not commercially labor service was expanded in Germany to an inherent part of modern labor market policy in a period between 30 and 40 years. The labor service was in the end of the 19th century insignificant and both institutionally and in terms of a policy of interests fragmented. But in 1927 it was integrated by the law about labor service and unemployment insurance into a system of coordinated public institutions and public policies. The purpose of this new implemented law is to balance and to influence the labor market, the employment policy, and to ensure a basic social care of the unemployed. The goals of the labor market policy, developed in a long historical...