Monatlicher Nowcast der realisierten Kurzarbeit auf Basis von Unternehmensbefragungen (Study to be published in German only)

Tasks

The Federal Employment Agency (FEA) publishes current data on the development of short-time work in its monthly labor market statistics. The reporting months of the data on short-time work vary depending on the indicator. Data on notifications of short-time work received by the employment agencies are available up to the current margin (currently: until April 2020). However, these do not provide any information on the actual use of short-time work. Final results on the number of recipients of short-time work benefits will only be published after a delay of several months (current: until October 2019). Even the projections published by the FEA on the number of short-time work schemes implemented on the basis of provisional data will only be published with a time delay (currently: federal government until February 2020; federal states and sectors until January 2020).

Methods

In the study, a methodology for forecasting actual short-time work as close as possible to the current level (nowcast) is developed on the basis of the ifo Institute's Business Survey. The ifo Business Survey is a monthly survey and covers all major sectors of the commercial economy. In order to approximate the number of people on short- time work, a special question on the number of employees on short time work was asked for the first time in the May wave of the survey. In order to broaden the focus of the nowcast, the June survey also asks about the number of employees on short-time work. This will be continued in the following months, depending on the significance and continuing relevance of the topic of short-time work in the wake of the Corona crisis, which has yet to be determined. 

On the basis of the survey data, calculations on the number of persons on short-time work (in the months of May and June 2020) will be prepared as part of the study. This includes a presentation by economic sectors and federal states. In addition, the actual number of hours lost due to short-time work is approximated for the month of June.

Data and other sources

ifo Business Survey supplemented by special questions on short-time work

Results

On the basis of these figures, the number of employees on short-time work in May is estimated to 7.3 million. Thus, more than one in five employees subject to social security contributions were probably on short-time work in May. In June, the number of short-time workers probably fell only slightly to 6.7 million. Although short-time work is used to a large extent in most sectors and regions, a clear heterogeneity between them is measurable, which is primarily due to the varying degrees to which individual sectors of the economy have been affected by the Corona crisis.