Dhe German labor market continues to be robust despite the war in Ukraine, high energy prices and supply bottlenecks. As the Federal Employment Agency (BA) announced on Friday in Nuremberg, unemployment has risen sharply for the second month in a row: by 107,000 to 2.470 million. However, this is mainly due to the fact that refugees from Ukraine have recently been entitled to basic security and are now increasingly being recorded in the official labor market data – and because of the holiday season.
In view of the crises, the labor market development is “really good”, said BA board member Daniel Terzenbach. Without tracking Ukrainian refugees – most of whom are women – unemployment would have risen about half as much, and that would be “quite a normal level for this time of year,” he said. Unemployment usually increases in the holiday month of July because many companies only close again after the summer break and some young people do not find work immediately after leaving school.
According to Terzenbach, around 300,000 refugees from Ukraine of working age have been registered in the job centers since the beginning of the war in February. The fact that the unemployment rate has risen to 5.4 percent as a result should not be viewed negatively, he emphasized. The job centers could now “work with the Ukrainians on their employment biography, promote language, organize qualifications, ensure childcare together. In the basic security, in the job centers can now be helped.” So far, only a few Ukrainian women have found work: According to a rough estimate by the BA, there should be around 26,000.
If you look at the other indicators, the job market also remains robust despite the weakening economy. According to the Federal Statistical Office, employment rose by a further 0.1 percent to 45.4 million in June. Employment subject to social security contributions has increased particularly strongly. Compared to the previous year, it increased by 681,000. Above all, the hospitality industry, engineering offices and energy consultancies, but also trade and health care continued to hire. And: Many companies are still looking for staff.
Despite all this, it is unclear how things will continue in the coming months. This was also made clear by Andrea Nahles, who will be the first woman to take over the chair of the BA board on Monday. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like a stable energy supply at the moment,” Nahles told the “Spiegel”. Rather, one must assume “that a conscious destabilization of the German economy is to be pursued here”. She doesn’t believe that this will leave the labor market untouched. However, it is not yet clear how severe the effects will be.
Nahles made it clear that the authority is preparing for various scenarios, which should also include a gas supply stop. At the same time, she advocated making short-time work – which has proven to be an effective tool during the pandemic – less bureaucratic. Researchers at the Institute for Labor Market and Vocational Research, which is part of the BA, have just outlined what that could look like. In their research report, Enzo Weber and Yasemin Yilmaz explain that short-time work is not actually made for millions of people affected and for longer periods of time because it is based on individual requirements. It takes a long time to process the applications. According to the scientists, it would be conceivable to use the term “force majeure” in an emergency in order to trigger simplified access to short-time work. A more far-reaching variant would be not to look at the loss of individual working hours, but to grant subsidies for the entire operational wage costs, the amount of which would depend on the loss of sales.