Informative mailings stimulate the take-up of unemployment benefit extensions

The “renewal-of-entitlement” reform of October 2014 introduced an informative letter automatically sent to claimants upon unemployment benefit exhaustion. This letter emphasizes administrative procedures claimants should undertake in order to apply for a benefit extension, provided that they worked sufficient hours recently. Reception of this mailing induced claimants to send Employer Certificates more systematically, hence extending their potential benefit duration by one month on average. This effect is particularly strong among workers who were unemployed for the first time and often sent no Employer Certificates before the reform. The informative mailing provided them with pieces of information they used to miss, whereas it mostly acted as a reminder for claimants who underwent more unemployment spells.