138,017 Lower Austrians are already in short-time work – Lower Austria

The corona crisis will leave deep traces for the Lower Austrians over the years: As of April 13, the Lower Austrian Labor Market Service (AMS) received over 9,000 applications for 138,017 employees. “That is a thousand times more applications than normal and a hundred times more within a few weeks than during the economic and financial crisis of 2009 in a whole year,” explains AMS Lower Austria Managing Director Sven Hergovich.

200,000 soon in short-time work?

In order to cope with this rush, the state management has radically restructured the organizational structure of the Lower Austria AMS. “Around 500 applications are currently being approved every day,” says Sven Hergovich. 159 AMS NÖ employees are currently working on the short-term Corona. A month ago, this was only one expert for the entire AMS NÖ. The AMS NÖ expects that every fourth to third employee in Lower Austria will be on short-time work as a result of the corona crisis. In numbers: between 150,000 and 200,000.

With the outbreak of the corona crisis in mid-March, the number of unemployed in Lower Austria rose by almost 25,000 people. Across Austria, 562,522 people are now without a job (unemployed and training) – that is a worrying 12.2 percent.

Hergovich, however, says: “I am happy about every person who does not become unemployed but instead goes into short-time work. It means less personal suffering, more income, more purchasing power and security for the companies when they start again after the crisis.”

By the way: The financial expenditure will amount to 458 million euros

Even if “Austria is slowly starting up again” since Tuesday, the real, economic and health damage caused by the rigorous measures will still be felt for years to decades. And what, according to some experts, is completely lost: the consequential damage caused by unemployment (depression, alcohol, addictions) and the consequences of postponement or postponement of non-urgent operations as well as the limited treatment of chronically ill people will result in numerous victims. Only this will probably not appear in any statistics.

Created with Sketch.Continue reading