Intensified counseling, job search assistance and related policies have been found to be effective for labor market integration of the unemployed by a large number of studies, but the evidence for older and hard‐to‐place unemployed is more mixed. In this paper, we present key results for a large‐scale active labor market program directed at the older unemployed in Germany. To identify the treatment effects, we exploit regional variation in program participation. We use a combination of different evaluation estimators to check the sensitivity of the results to selection, substitution and local labor market effects. We find positive effects of the program in the range of 5–10 percentage points on integration into unsubsidized employment. However, there are also substantial lock‐in effects, such that program participants have a higher probability of remaining on public welfare benefit receipt for up to 1 year after commencing the program.
