After the corona-related economic crisis, AMS boss Johannes Kopf is expecting an upturn and falling unemployment this year.
The current economic crisis, triggered by the corona pandemic, is the largest labor market crisis since World War II. The board member of the Public Employment Service (AMS) Johannes Kopf is nevertheless positive. “After the crisis comes the boom,” he told the APA. For this, the unemployed would have to be retrained and trained now. Before that, unemployment in Austria will rise to over 500,000 people and will probably peak at the end of January.
However, it is difficult to make a precise forecast of when the upswing will occur. However, it is currently assumed that unemployment will fall from the third quarter of 2021. Kopf sees vaccination and its spread as a turning point in development. Here there will be “pull-forward effects”: “If this vaccination is available to large parts of the population and is promised to others, then one can assume that the propensity to invest and consume will rise again because one notices that something is going on.” He has already made the decision for himself: “As soon as there is a vaccination, I'll get vaccinated.”
More than 500,000 unemployed would have been there by the end of December. Unemployment will certainly be even higher in January. The peak of the absolute unemployment figures is expected for the end of January. In addition, one must seriously assume that there will probably no longer be any real winter tourism this year. This also depends on the travel warnings and quarantine regulations. The depressed tourism does not have such a massive impact on unemployment, since half of the employees are foreigners who now often stay in their home countries.
The development of unemployment in construction, which is dependent on the weather and snow conditions, is just as important. As Kopf described, the construction activity could not be continued and orders could not be carried out if there was snow in deep areas in winter. Overall, the construction industry remained surprisingly stable during the coronavirus crisis.
In any case, compared to the previous year's figures, unemployment will fall at the end of March because it exploded in March 2020 – when the first lockdown began. At the time, there had been an increase of 200,000 unemployed in 14 days. As a result, unemployment continued to rise until mid-April.
The AMS is well prepared for the economic upturn expected this year. With the Corona job offensive, the largest training program was started with the help of the 700 million euros from the government. In addition, short-time work will continue and the revenue replacement, coupled with a ban on dismissal, is attractive for companies. “It costs a lot of money, but it works,” Kopf is convinced of the Corona aid.
The AMS boss is concerned about the sharp rise in the number of long-term unemployed. At the end of November there were 36 percent more long-term unemployed than in the previous year – namely 128,000 people. The integration of refugees into the labor market was also slowed down by the crisis. In contrast, the big trends – digitization and home office – have been accelerated by the crisis. Online conferences instead of business trips and more and more work from home will remain, Kopf expects.
There is also increasing demand for workers in digitization, there is a shortage of skilled workers. “It was an annus horribilis, and yet there are positive things in this difficult year,” said the AMS board. He would like to express his thanks to all employees at the AMS who have coped with the onslaught of short-time work and unemployment.
