As of: 07/26/2021 5:51 a.m.
The corona pandemic has brought many of the around four million self-employed people in Germany to the brink of existence. Women were often hit particularly hard. Experts see shortcomings in the aid packages.
2020 should be Katharina Löbl’s year. Three years earlier she had founded her socio-educational event agency “Ankaro” for children and young people. Family celebrations, children’s birthdays, baby showers: the Frankfurt-born agency was on a growth path. Katharina Löbl’s order book was completely full by the end of 2020. “I finally wanted to reap the fruits that I had sown over the first tough start-up years,” says the trained social worker. But the corona crisis caused their business model to collapse within a few weeks. During this time she felt helpless, powerless and overwhelmed. On some days she was afraid to open her e-mail inbox.
Heavy loss of income
Like Löbl, many self-employed people have felt in the past few months. According to a recent study by the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), more than half of all self-employed people in Germany had to cope with severe income losses in spring 2020. Including more women (63 percent) than men (47 percent) due to the industry.
In non-Corona times, according to the DIW, around 85 percent of all self-employed are still self-employed in the following year. But from 2019 to 2020 this proportion fell to 74 percent. It looks similar a year later.
Depression and anxiety symptoms as consequences
Independent women in particular had to give up because they “are more often active in industries that have been severely affected by the pandemic,” says DIW researcher Alexander Kritos. He makes it clear that it is not because women give up faster or are less able to survive. The reason is the financial losses that go along with the work of the self-employed. Symptoms of anxiety and depression are the result, according to Kritos.
Many entrepreneurs have gone to their reserves or have used up their retirement provisions: This is how Ellen Bommersheim from the “Kompass” center for business start-ups experiences the situation of the self-employed. There is a lack of liquidity.
Particularly precarious situation for solo self-employed
The situation is particularly tense among the solo self-employed. Because most of the federal aid (“emergency aid”, “bridging aid”) was primarily based on fixed operating costs. But solo self-employed hardly have any of these. Critics consider this to be fatally bad planning by the federal government, which has been trying to iron out this since the beginning of this year.
In the meantime there is the so-called “restart aid”, with which, among other things, solo self-employed persons receive 7,500 euros for the period from January to June of this year. The “Restart Aid Plus” program that has just started is a similar funding program for the coming months of July to September. But this help comes very late – too late for many. According to the Federal Employment Agency, 132,000 self-employed had to apply for Hartz IV between April 2020 and June 2021.
Demand for sustainable help
The federal government’s new aid packages are met with criticism in the industry. Instead of offering the solo self-employed a variety of programs, DIW researcher Kritos thinks it makes more sense to develop a single ongoing program for the further period of the corona pandemic. In the event of a drop in sales, this could provide reliable support and cover living costs regardless of operating costs. Expert Bommersheim sees it similarly. She calls for “more sustainable instruments to be developed in order to be able to react socially and economically to exogenous shocks such as pandemics”.
Katharina Löbl did not have to give up her independence. In the meantime, her order book is filling up again. But in the past few months she has saved up wherever she could. At times she moved back in with her parents so as not to have to pay rent. She, too, demands more from politics. The restart aid is a good start, but it is set very low and therefore only a drop in the ocean.