Tuesday, November 30th, 2021
The situation will cloud over in 2022
Employment agency: Unvaccinated people seize the land
The Federal Employment Agency expects a difficult winter. In view of the high incidence and the large number of unvaccinated people, she expects more unemployed in the coming year. She urges the federal government to take countermeasures. The current situation should not repeat itself.
The Federal Employment Agency (BA) is alarmed by the rising corona numbers. “We are assuming that we are facing a really difficult winter,” said the head of the authorities Detlef Scheele in Nuremberg. In November the job market continued to recover and the number of unemployed fell. In some regions, however, more short-time work is indicated again in sectors such as retail and catering. He called on the federal government to prepare a law for a general vaccination requirement. The outlook for 2022 is clouded: “We are now assuming increased unemployment also in the next year.”
Scheele underlined his appeal to prepare a mandatory vaccination law. “You have all seen the pictures,” said the BA boss with a view to intensive care units with corona patients. “Memmingen is in Germany and not in the Sahel zone. And the destination airport of the Bundeswehr Airbus with intensive care patients is also in Paderborn and not in Central Africa.” Anyone who has seen this cannot avoid preparing such a law. “My request is simply that it is ready in the drawer,” said Scheele.
The BA boss spoke of a connection between low vaccination rates, high corona incidence, the resulting contact restrictions and losses for retail, gastronomy and tourism: It shows that the chain of entanglements always begins with a low vaccination rate. In areas with few vaccinations, the incidence is increasing, this leads to closures, livelihoods are at risk. If you go into the next year and a group of around 20 percent of the people cannot be reached for a vaccination, “you cannot allow this group to take over this country again in 2022”.
Therefore, a compulsory vaccination must be prepared and introduced to the Bundestag if the anti-corona measures in January had not worked. “I think this is the only chance this year not to end up in such a terrible situation for people, businesses, employees, entrepreneurs and those who are sick again.” The federal government must point out that “2021 will not repeat itself next autumn”.
Heil: “New obstacles for the labor market”
Federal Labor Minister Hubertus Heil also expressed deep concerns. “This positive trend is strongly endangered by the current course of the pandemic with the daily highs in the number of infections,” said the acting minister. “We are doing everything necessary to get the job market safely through the winter.” Heil was satisfied with the implementation of the new 3G rule in the workplace – it is being implemented in an exemplary manner in large parts of the economy and increasing the willingness to vaccinate in the population.
“We are experiencing new obstacles for the labor market, which will most likely increase in winter. The advertisements for short-time work are already going up again, especially in the hospitality industry,” emphasized Heil. The federal government recently decided to extend the simplified access to short-time allowance until March 31, 2022.
In November, however, according to the BA, there were hardly any consequences of the current corona situation on the labor market. However, the number of reports of short-time work is increasing again. In the current month, the number of unemployed fell by 60,000 to 2.317 million. The decline was thus stronger than in the November months of the past three years. The unemployment rate fell by 0.1 points to 5.1 percent. Even if the seasonal influences are factored out, the number of unemployed fell by a seasonally adjusted 34,000.
According to preliminary projected BA figures, 751,000 employees received short-time allowance in September. In April 2020, a record high of just under six million was recorded. Scheele warned: “In our opinion, the number of short-time workers is likely to increase again in the next few months rather than decrease again.”
It has been going up here in the past few days. The registrations of short-time work have long since come no longer only from industry, which continues to suffer from delivery bottlenecks, but increasingly also from the catering and tourism sectors. Saxony, Thuringia and Bavaria, the three federal states with the currently highest numbers of infections in Germany, are at the forefront, said Scheele.