Federal agency for work
There is money for short-time work over the winter
The Federal Employment Agency wants to spend 1.7 billion on short-time work for the coming year. Photo: Jens Büttner / dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
Short-time work saved the German labor market last year and this year. But the price is high. The Federal Employment Agency has raised billions for this.
According to its CEO Detlef Scheele, the Federal Employment Agency is prepared for a possible new wave of short-time workers should the corona pandemic develop problematically. Scheele told the German Press Agency in Nuremberg that there was sufficient cushion in the new budget for 2022 until March 31.
Short-time work has already risen noticeably since mid-November. “From a low level, but relatively erratic,” said Scheele. We therefore have to redeploy staff again in order to cope with the volume. “But we hope that it will be over by the end of March,” he said. The hospitality industry is affected, especially in the high-incidence areas of Bavaria and the new federal states.
There is no reason to assume that benefits will not be paid – in his opinion, the new federal government is not planning to change course either. It is conceivable that the federal government’s spring forecast will look different than the autumn forecast, on the basis of which the new budget was calculated. “If something comes after March, we may have to readjust again,” said Scheele.
But then the federal government would have to step in. “Short-time work allowance is a legal claim,” said Scheele. But he assumes that the approach is sufficient. From 2023 on, the Federal Agency will be able to build up a reserve again – after the contribution rate for unemployment insurance had risen again by 0.2 percentage points as previously planned and an additional 2.6 billion euros would be flushed into the coffers of the Nuremberg authorities.
According to the current approach, the Federal Agency wants to spend 38 billion euros in the coming year – 1.7 billion of which will be for short-time work. That is significantly less than in the current year, when around 20 billion euros were spent on short-time work and the associated social benefits. The short-time working had made a significant contribution, especially in the lockdown phases of the previous Corona crisis, to the fact that there was not a flood of unemployed, but that people could be kept in their jobs.