Gramatneusiedl

In 2020 Gramatneusiedl received international attention, when the Public Employment Service (AMS) in cooperation with University of Oxford economists Maximilian Kasy and Lukas Lehner started a job guarantee pilot in the municipality. The municipality became famous a century earlier through a landmark study in empirical social research when Marie Jahoda, Paul Lazarsfeld and Hans Zeisel studied the consequences of mass unemployment on a community in the wake of the Great Depression.^[5] The current job guarantee pilot returned to the site to study the opposite: what happens when unemployed people are guaranteed a job? The program offers jobs to every unemployed job seeker who has been without a paid job for more than a year.^[6] When a job seeker is placed with a private company, the Public Employment Service pays 100% of the wage for the first three months, and 66% during the subsequent nine months. Though, most of the long-term jobless were placed in non-profit training companies tasked with repairing second-hand furniture, renovating housing, public gardening, and similar jobs. The pilot eliminated long-term unemployment – an important result, given the programme’s entirely voluntary nature.^[7] Participants’ gained greater financial security, improved their psycho-social stability and social inclusion.^[8] The study drew international attention^[9] and informed policy reports by the EU,^[10] OECD,^[11] UN,^[12] and ILO.^[13] The program ended in 2024 and served as the basis for the European Commission's Social Fund + (ESF+) to provide 23 million EUR for further job guarantee pilots across Europe.^[14]