The standstill in the coronavirus pandemic is causing a stronger drop in employment than the financial and economic crisis of 2008/2009. This year in March and April, 380,000 employment contracts were terminated.
03.06.2020 11.50
Online since today, 11.50 a.m.
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New employment was started 230,000 times. Statistics Austria announced this on Wednesday. In April things went up at least slightly. There were about 70,000 completions compared to 100,000 recordings. By contrast, in March the ratio was 314,000 to 130,000. Depending on the sector, there are different effects on the Austrian labor market due to the coronavirus crisis.
The changes in April are explained by the different developments in the individual sectors. The easing of the CoV measures that came into force in mid-April had a particularly positive effect on the construction industry (only slightly more than 5,000 completions with 33,000 recordings). In contrast, in the economic sections “Art, Entertainment and Recreation” as well as “Accommodation and Gastronomy”, however, there were hardly any new jobs.
2009 decrease in 28,000 people
According to the international definition for April, the number of 4,079,000 persons in employment was 80,000 below that of March, 159,000 below that of February and 164,000 below that of April 2019. Even stronger than the number of 227,700 unemployed according to international By definition, the decline in employment is reflected in the “hidden reserve” of the labor market: it grew from 129,000 in February 2020 to 221,000 in April 2020.
The current decline in employment thus clearly exceeds – at least in the short term – the effects of the economic and financial crisis of 2009 on the job market, according to Statistics Austria. At that time, the maximum decline in employment was just under 28,000 people compared to the quarterly averages of the 2nd quarter of 2009 and the 2nd quarter of 2008.
Unemployment rate over twelve percent
In addition, there is also short-time working with those people who kept their job but worked less. They worked an average of 25.4 hours in April this year, 6.9 fewer hours per week than in April 2019 due to short-time work, reduction of time credits and (special) vacation.
The number of unemployed registered with the Labor Market Service (AMS) rose to 522,300 people by the end of April (+226,000 compared to April of the previous year). The national unemployment rate was 12.8 percent at the end of April, 5.5 percentage points above the previous year’s level.
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