December Sees Marginal Decline in Short-Time Work in Germany
Short-time work in Germany fell slightly in December. According to ifo estimates, at year-end 1.95 million people were affected compared with 1.98 million in the previous month. “But even if it looks on the surface like things are stabilizing, greater shifts are happening behind the scenes: yes, short-time work is down in manufacturing, in all of its economic sectors. But it increased in retail and hospitality, which the current lockdown has hit especially hard,” says ifo labor market expert Sebastian Link.
In retail, the number of short-time workers soared to 150,000 people, up from 97,000 in November, accounting for 6.1 percent and 3.9 percent respectively of employees subject to social insurance contributions. In hospitality, as many as 414,000 employees were on short-time work, compared with 374,000 in November. In percentage terms, this corresponds to 39.0 percent, up from 35.3 percent. There were fewer short-time workers in wholesale, where the figure dropped from 101,000 to 84,000 employees, or from 7.2 to 6.0 percent. For car dealerships and repair shops, it sank from 26,000 (3.6 percent) to 22,000 (3.2 percent) people.
However, for those sectors hit especially hard by the lockdown that started in mid-December, the figures could be underestimates. In the case of retail and car dealerships, for instance, 85 percent of all survey participants had already reported their figures for short-time work before the measures were announced.
In manufacturing, the number of short-time workers fell from 680,000 in November to 583,000, or from 9.8 percent to 8.4 percent of the workforce. Many employees in the mechanical engineering sector are still on short-time work, but the number is on the decline here, too, falling from 185,000 (17.3 percent) to 161,000 (15.1 percent).
The findings are based on reports from approximately 7,000 companies that the ifo Institute asked about their current use of short-time work in its monthly Business Survey for December.
