Arbeitsplätze durch Arbeitsmarktöffnung – Reflexionen zur aktuellen beschäftigungspolitischen Debatte –
AbstractThe high level of structural unemployment has been for many years the most serious economic problem in Germany. It is argued that this problem can be traced to two persistent distortions: One refers to misconcieved collective wage agreements, which do not provide an adequately differentiated wage structure according to workforce qualifications and to sectoral and regional characteristics; the other cause is a lack of flexibility on the labour market as a result of overregulation. The German labour market does not function with the elasticity required to cope with the challenges of globalization and technical progress. There is an urgent need to reform the institutional framework of the labour market. Various proposals are made in this paper. They address both the wage negotiators and the legislator. However, at present the Federal Government is taking initiatives of regulatory policy which may further deepen rigidities on the labour market and thus make a sustained increase in employment more difficult to achieve.