Corona is reversing the trend: the number of people in employment is falling for the first time in 14 years

Monday, January 4th, 2021

Corona crisis costs jobs
Unemployment is increasing significantly

For 14 years, Germany has had more people in employment every year. But the corona pandemic will suddenly end the upward trend in 2020. In particular, people in poorly secured jobs and self-employed are feeling the effects of the crisis.

After 14 years of growth, the number of people in employment in Germany fell for the first time in the Corona year 2020. An annual average of 44.8 million people had a job in Germany or were self-employed, as reported by the Federal Statistical Office. That was 1.1 percent less than in 2019 and 0.2 percent less than in 2018. The number of unemployed climbed significantly by 34.5 percent to 1.85 million.

According to the statistics, poorly secured jobs in particular were lost, while employees subject to social security contributions were often put on short-time work. The number of self-employed people and their relatives who help out fell even more significantly than in previous years to 4.0 million. In the services sector, the number of employees fell particularly sharply in the retail, transport and hospitality sectors by 2.0 percent and for industry-related service providers (-2.5 percent) including temporary work.

However, there were additional jobs in the public service, education and health. In industry, the number of people in employment fell by 2.3 percent to around 8.2 million during the crisis. The bright spot here was the construction industry with an increase of 0.7 percent.

In the previous 14 years, the number of employees had risen steadily, with immigration and greater labor force participation by residents more than offsetting the demographic effects of an aging society. Immigration was made more difficult under Corona conditions and the domestic workforce is considered to be visibly exhausted.