Organization of the labor market in Germany in terms of social policy

The Federal Republic of Germany, which is among the leading economies in the world economy, implemented the Hartz Reforms between 2003-2005 after the "Job-Placement Scandal" (Vermittlungsskandal) that broke out in the Federal Labor Office in 2002. Thanks to these reforms, Germany was finally able to achieve positive results in the fight against high unemployment rates, which lasted for years since 1970s, and have taken a great attention with its low unemployment rates for about last 15 years. With these reforms, which adopted an activating labor market policy approach, labor markets in Germany were tried to be reshaped and modernized in order to ensure sustainability in global competition. In this context, in terms of social policy, the changes in the German labor markets with the Hartz Reforms are the subject of the thesis. The aim of the thesis is to reveal the changes on organization of labor markets which have made Germany overcome high unemployment rate successfully and become competive in the World markets. In the study, qualitative data collection methods were used and the data obtained from the relevant literature review were analyzed in longitudinally. As a result of the analyzes, it has been observed that there has been an ongoing debate on the Hartz Reforms and the understandings on which they are based in terms of whether there is a break or paradigm shift in the German social policy traditions. However, it has been concluded that the Hartz Reforms, on the one hand, were carried out by staying within the existing Social Market Economy and German social policy paradigm, and, on the other hand, there there has been a tendency toward the liberal economy model, prevailing in Anglo-Saxon countries.