Unemployment strongly influences a person’s economic resources and life chances. Especially for unemployed individuals who have to rely on means-tested benefits, episodes of unemployment often go along with substantial material restrictions. Therefore, from a policy perspective, measures or regulations that might shorten unemployment episodes and reduce overall unemployment are particularly important.

In this paper, we analyse whether concessions regarding the characteristics of the job searched for influence an individual’s unemployment duration. In doing so, we focus on a particular aspect of availability requirements in Germany. This is the fact that for unemployed recipients of means-tested benefits almost all types of jobs count as suitable employment and, therefore, recipients are obliged to make job-related concessions if offered a job requiring such concessions.

The results indicate that there is no positive effect of making concessions regarding qualification requirements or status on employment chances. In contrast, there are positive effects of wage concessions. However, searching for a job in a different occupation (that does not necessarily imply a concession) has a comparable, positive effect on finding employment. Thus, it appears that being generally flexible regarding one’s future occupation might be at least as important for employment chances as making concessions.

失业强烈影响一个人的经济资源和生活机会。尤其是对于那些不得不依靠经济状况调查福利的失业者来说，失业事件往往伴随着大量的物质限制。因此，从政策角度来看，可能缩短失业事件并降低总体失业的措施或法规尤为重要。

在本文中，我们分析了有关所寻找工作的特征的让步是否会影响个人的失业持续时间。在此过程中，我们专注于德国可用性要求的特定方面。事实上，对于领取经济状况调查福利的失业者来说，几乎所有类型的工作都算作合适的工作，因此，如果提供需要此类让步的工作，领取者有义务做出与工作相关的让步。

结果表明，在资格要求或地位方面做出让步对就业机会没有积极影响。相比之下，工资让步有积极的影响。然而，在不同的职业中寻找工作（这并不一定意味着让步）对找工作有相当的积极影响。因此，对于一个人的未来职业而言，总体上保持灵活性似乎对于就业机会而言至少与做出让步一样重要。