Facts
B., born in 1972, is a trained baker/confectioner and worked as such from October 1991 in the bakery-confectionery H. Due to an occupational rhinoconjunctivitis allergica and a sensitization to house dust mites, the employment relationship was terminated at the end of 1994. From March 1996, B. worked as an operations employee/intern at the canning factory I. AG and began a two-year apprenticeship as a canned and frozen food technologist there in August 1996. However, the IV office of the canton of Thurgau rejected B.'s application for retraining to the new occupation, as the lower earnings as an operations employee did not reach the materiality threshold of 20% required for the retraining entitlement.Considerations
The Federal Court concluded that the appellant's claim for retraining should be affirmed. It is true that for the assessment of equivalence within the meaning of the case law, the earning opportunities in the original and the new occupation or in an activity reasonable for the insured person are primarily to be taken into account. However, it is not permissible to make the entitlement to retraining measures dependent solely on the result of an income comparison limited to the current point in time, without regard to the qualitative level of training on the one hand and the associated future development of earning opportunities on the other. Rather, in the context of the prognosis to be made, taking into account all the circumstances, not only the aspect of earning opportunities, but also the qualitative significance of the two occupations to be compared, which is also relevant for the future income development, must be taken into account. The approximate equivalence of earning opportunities in the old and new activity is likely to be achieved only if the two training courses also have a more or less comparable value. In the present case, the activity exercised by B. as…