Unemployment is a pressing societal problem world-wide. The consequences of unemployment are disproportionately more severe for older individuals. Building on literature on digital technologies in the context of unemployment and social support in digital peer groups, we design and evaluate a novel job counseling approach to leverage the power of digital peer groups to assist older unemployed individuals in regaining employment. Our approach supplements the traditional one-on-one offline counseling. It is specifically designed for older unemployed individuals, with small group sizes, moderation, and implementation through an easily accessible online messenger. We demonstrate the practical applicability of the proposed approach by instantiating it in cooperation with the German Federal Employment Agency, and we demonstrate how the approach can be used in terms of mutual social support. We evaluate the efficacy of the approach in a controlled, randomized field experiment with 987 older unemployed individuals. The results demonstrate the approach’s positive impact on reemployment chances of older unemployed individuals, by increasing their job search skills and job search intensity. Furthermore, our evaluation reveals that gender and job market situation are important contextual factors for the effectiveness of the digital peer group-based approach, warranting further recognition in research.

失业是全世界面临的一个紧迫的社会问题。失业的后果对老年人来说更为严重。基于数字同伴群体失业和社会支持的背景下的数字技术文献，我们设计和评估了一种新颖的工作咨询方法，以利用数字同伴群体的力量来帮助老年失业者重新获得就业。我们的方法补充了传统的一对一离线咨询。它专为年长的失业者设计，小组规模小，适度，并通过易于访问的在线信使实施。我们通过与德国联邦就业局合作实例化来展示所提出的方法的实际适用性，并展示了如何将该方法用于相互社会支持。我们在对 987 名老年失业者进行的对照随机现场实验中评估了该方法的有效性。结果表明，该方法通过提高老年失业者的求职技能和求职强度，对他们的再就业机会产生了积极影响。此外，我们的评估表明，性别和就业市场状况是基于数字同伴群体的方法有效性的重要背景因素，值得在研究中得到进一步认可。