New Register Data from the German Public Employment Service on Voluntary Unemployment Insurance

1 Introduction

In Germany, all employed workers pay into a mandatory unemployment insurance scheme. By a reform in 2006, a voluntary unemployment insurance scheme was introduced. Under the new scheme, individuals who work abroad, as caregivers at home or who start-up as self-employed workers can insure themselves against unemployment.

Yet, little is known about this labor market policy tool partly because administrative data on the voluntarily insured workers were incomplete in the past. More specifically, only the selective sample of those voluntarily insured workers who became unemployed was observed in the data.

Aiming to close this gap and to contribute to a more complete picture on this labor market policy tool, we present new administrative data on the contribution payments to voluntary unemployment insurance. These data became available very recently. Before we describe the data and how they can be accessed, we explain the institutional setting.

2 The voluntary unemployment insurance scheme in Germany

In addition to the mandatory unemployment insurance scheme, a voluntary unemployment insurance scheme (Versicherungspflichtverhältnis auf Antrag, Section 28a Social Code III) was established in 2006 in Germany to provide a safety net for three groups of individuals: a) persons who work outside the European Economic Area and Switzerland, b) those giving care to relatives, and c) self-employed individuals. Individuals of these groups are entitled to voluntarily insure themselves against unemployment if they work at least 15 hours per week in the respective activity (14 hours for caregivers).

The entitlement to voluntary insurance is restricted to those who fulfil at least one of the three criteria regarding their previous employment history: when starting the voluntarily insured employment activity the individual either a) was mandatorily insured for one year within the previous two years, or b) s/he previously received unemployment benefits, or c) s/he previously participated in a job-creation scheme that interrupted mandatory insurance or receipt of unemployment benefits (see Table 1 and Bundesagentur für Arbeit, 2015, for more details).

Individuals cannot insure themselves voluntarily against unemployment on top of mandatory insurance. For instance, a caregiver who holds a part-time job (in addition to the caring activity) cannot sign up for voluntary insurance, if the part-time job comes with mandatory insurance. ^[1] Some groups are excluded from unemployment insurance, because they are exempted from the mandatory unemployment insurance scheme: for example, civil servants and old age pensioners cannot sign up for voluntary insurance.

Finally, individuals can only sign up for voluntary unemployment insurance within the first three months of the respective (self-)employment activity. ^[2] When signing up for voluntary unemployment insurance, individuals have to proof that they took up the respective activity and work at least the minimum hours.

Insurance contributions vary between employment activities. As of 2015, the monthly contribution ranges from 8.51 (7.25) euro in West (East) Germany for caregivers to 85.05 euro for persons working abroad. Self-employed workers pay 42.53 (36.23) euro per month during an initial period and 85.05 (72.45) euro later on. ^[3]

Upon entry into unemployment, the maximum benefit entitlement duration and the contribution requirements are the same as for mandatorily and voluntarily insured persons: depending on age at entry into unemployment and the prior labor market history, the maximum benefit entitlement duration ranges from six months to two years. ^[4]

The calculation of the benefit amounts is slightly more complicated in the case of voluntary insurance: the benefits are calculated based on the previous employment income (like for mandatorily insured individuals), only if the voluntarily insured person has been mandatorily insured for at least 150 days during the two years before becoming unemployed. Otherwise, the benefits are calculated from virtual income, which depends mainly on qualifications.

Table 2 gives the monthly benefits derived from virtual income by qualification level as of 2015. Importantly, self-employed workers can only interrupt their self-employment twice and receive unemployment benefits unless they acquire a new entitlement to unemployment benefits.

The voluntary unemployment insurance is suspended when an individual either becomes mandatorily insured or exempted from insurance as both rules out voluntary insurance. Individuals drop out of the unemployment insurance if they do not pay their contributions for three months or terminate the activity for which they insured. After five years of voluntary insurance, persons can furthermore cancel the insurance with three months’ notice. Note that self-employed persons can remain in the insurance when they have employees.

3 Data

3.5 Descriptive statistics

Figure 1 depicts the distribution of inflows into VUIC payments over the calendar year 2013.

Figure 1:

Start of voluntary unemployment insurance by calendar month (inflow 2013).

February, November and December were the months with fewest VUIC payment starts and in January and April most VUIC payments started. The median duration of VUIC payments is 577 days and by April 30, 2015, 55.3 percent of the VUIC spells are censored. 66.6 percent of the VUIC individuals are male and 33.3 percent female (Table 3). 88.4 percent are self-employed, 1.9 percent are caregivers, 9.1 percent work abroad and in 0.6 percent the information is missing. On average, VUIC individuals were 45 years old at VUIC payment start.

Table 3:

Selected descriptive statistics on voluntary unemployment insurance (inflow 2013).

Variable	Mean
Median duration VUIC payments in days	577
Censored in %	55.3
Male in %	66.6
Female in %	33.3
Type of employment
Self-employed in %	88.4
Caregiver in %	1.9
Abroad in %	9.1
Age in years	45
Employment history in days:
− Year before VUIC start
Employed*	177
Unemployed	120
− Year after VUIC start
Employed*	58
Unemployed	20

Source: Own calculations based on VUIC data and IEB data.

Notes: Number of observations 21,518.

1. Employed: any type of employment with social contribution payments without self-employment (including marginal employment).

Based on the IEB data, we built the number of days that individuals were employed (any employment), and respectively, unemployed (receiving any unemployment benefits) within the year prior, and respectively, after the start of the (first) VUIC spells. On average, individuals were 177 days in employment, and respectively, 120 days in unemployment in the year prior to VUIC start. Within the year after VUIC start, they spent, on average, 58 days in (not self-employed) employment and 20 days in unemployment.

4 Prospects and data access

The data are available to researchers under strict data protection in cooperation with researchers from the IAB. For information on alternative ways of access, interested researchers may contact the authors of the article. If necessary for specific projects, the IAB will try to update the data and to access a longer observation period than the one presented above.