Abstract:
The "Benchmarking of the German Federal States 2004" is based on a study of carefully selected labour market and economic indicators. Working with the radar chart method, the authors present three different benchmarks: one illustrates only labour market indicators, a second focuses solely on economic aspects, and a third benchmark combines the first two indicators to examine the overall performance of the German Federal States. The states were compared on the basis of analyses of the years 1998 and 2003, or 2002 respectively. Concurrently, the change in the states' overall performances between the two periods was a matter of particular interest. The list of indicators did include, for the first time, unemployment rates among older employees.
The relatively good performance of the states in the southern part of Germany as opposed to the poor economic and labour market situation of the states in the eastern part is especially significant in our ranking. As in our previous benchmark ratings, a certain stability in the performance of each state over a particular period of time becomes apparent.