"In many countries regional disparities are fairly large and persistent. Often classification systems are needed to provide succinct information on these disparities. This paper presents a model-based classification system which is designed to assess labour market conditions which influence the outcomes of active labour market policy. The innovation in this paper is the development of a procedure that combines a theory-guided analysis of determinants of regional disparities with standard classification approaches. The procedure is designed to resolve two limitations inherent in many existing classification schemes: first, their purely descriptive nature and second, the lack of a theoretically meaningful organization of the variable selection process." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku)