Vienna. The corona crisis has left behind bigger cuts on the Austrian labor market than the financial crisis in 2009. The last time the number of employees in Austria declined was in 2009, when 1.5 percent of jobs were lost due to the crisis. In the corona year 2020, employment fell by a whopping two percent.
This February 3.65 million people were employed, 3.5 percent less than in the same period of the previous year. “Normally, employment rises again from spring onwards, depending on the season,” says Dénes Kucsera, economist at Agenda Austria. In 2020 this recovery was canceled due to the corona crisis. There has been such a big slump as in the first months of the pandemic “not since the Second World War,” says Kucsera. Almost every third employee was on short-time work in April, in December only every 20.
For the first time since Christmas under 500,000 unemployed
This week the number of unemployed in Austria fell below the psychologically important mark of 500,000 for the first time since Christmas. At the beginning of the week, around 490,000 people were registered as unemployed or in AMS training. The number of people on short-time work also fell by 7,000 – to around 478,000.
The Corona short-time work was recently extended by three months until the end of June. Labor Minister Martin Kocher spoke out in favor of gradually phasing them out from the summer. The social partners will develop a successor model. Kucsera also recommends phasing out short-time working. The funds freed up are intended to promote new jobs, for example by reducing social security contributions for new hires.
The biggest job losses were recently once again in tourism and gastronomy. As a result, there was also the strongest growth in unemployment in Tyrol, which is heavily dependent on foreign holidaymakers. (here)
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