In the Upper Styrian Kreischberg ski area, winter is over for this year. The corona short season will end on March 1st, the company said on the weekend. The decision has a positive background: The operators use the time to build a 40 million euro ten-person gondola lift. On the Kreischberg, the calls for hotels and bars to be opened immediately have lost some of their volume. But not in many other tourist regions in the country.
Because, as a current OGM evaluation of the labor market data shows, Austria's tourist locations are suffering enormously from the closings. In the eleven strongest municipalities, the number of unemployed has increased 25-fold. In Galtür every fifth inhabitant was registered as unemployed in January, in Ischgl every seventh. While January unemployment rose by an average of almost a third (31.8 percent), the increase in Tyrol was 132 percent. “The winter sports regions were hit with full force,” says Johannes Klotz from market researcher OGM.
Trade and construction also affected
73,000 of all job seekers at the moment were previously employed in tourism (an increase of 113 percent compared to the previous year). In addition, there are another 138,000 employees on short-time work. In total, around 300,000 full-time jobs were directly or indirectly dependent on tourism before the corona crisis. We will probably not reach this peak in the next ten years, ”expects Thomas Reisenzahn, the managing director of Prodinger Tourismusberatung.
In addition to trade, the trade and construction industry, as classic supplier industries, are also severely affected by the total failure of the winter season, according to a study by the Society for Applied Economic Research. In total, another 45,000 unemployed in trade and construction were directly due to the lack of an alpine winter season.
At least on this front, a gradual opening of the affected industries in March could bring some relief, according to data from the Ministry of Labor on the effects of the first easing in January. According to this, 120,000 people in the trade and service sector have been able to take up a regular job again in the past three weeks.
Only the thermal baths benefit
But this positive development cannot be transferred one-to-one to tourism, warns Wifo economist Oliver Fritz. While the thermal spa regions could definitely benefit, it is completely open, especially in the winter sports resorts, whether opening the hotels so shortly before the end of the season will still pay off. According to the economic researcher, the industry can expect a real recovery at the earliest with the start of a “normal” summer season.
ÖGB President Wolfgang Katzian called for an extension of short-time work until the second half of the year in the ORF “press hour”. After all, short-time work is also much cheaper than unemployment benefits. He also believes that an increase in unemployment benefits is necessary. The top trade unionists do not believe in a restructuring of public finances without new taxes. “Anyone who thinks that one can only grow out of the crisis lives on the moon.” The crisis costs should be borne by the large digital corporations. In addition, one must also talk about the participation of large assets. [R8UMN
