The system of active labor market policies (ALMP) in the Slovak Republic consists to a large extent of the creation of socially purposeful and publicly useful jobs and of retraining of unemployed workers. So far, the effects of these types of active labor market policies have hardly been analyzed. This paper uses a unique administrative data from 20 Slovak districts to analyze to what extent it is beneficial for unemployed workers who want a regular job to accept a temporary ALMP-job or enter a retraining program. We find that indeed it is beneficial for workers to do so.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39600/3/wp213.pd