In industry, the number of short-time workers increases by 20,000 to 226,000.
(Photo: dpa)
Berlin According to a study, the number of short-time workers in Germany fell in October – but not in the industry, which is plagued by increasing material shortages. Overall, it decreased by 76,000 compared to the previous month to 504,000, as the Ifo Institute estimated on Thursday based on its company surveys and data from the Federal Employment Agency.
That corresponds to 1.5 percent of the workforce. Against the trend, short-time working in industry rose by 20,000 to 226,000. This corresponds to 3.3 percent of the industrial workforce. “The bottleneck in the preliminary products is literally stalling production,” said Ifo economic director Timo Wollmershäuser. “With the current order backlog, a maximum of 10,000 employees in industry should actually be on short-time work.”
The car manufacturers and their suppliers recorded increases from 27,000 to 33,000 (3.5 percent of employees), the manufacturers of metal products from 20,000 to 31,000 (3.8 percent) and the chemical industry from 15,000 to 19,000 (2.2 percent).
In the industry-related transport and storage sector, short-time work also rose slightly by 2000 to 69,000 people. “Here, too, the share of employees at 3.7 percent is well above the overall economic average,” said Ifo survey expert Stefan Sauer. Short-time work also increased at car dealers, from 8,000 to 12,000.
Top jobs of the day
Find the best jobs now and
be notified by email.
In the hospitality industry, on the other hand, it halved to 30,000 (2.8 percent). In wholesale it fell from 27,000 to 19,000 (1.3 percent), in retail from 37,000 to 20,000 (0.8 percent).
Before the start of the corona pandemic, the number of short-time workers was 134,000 in February 2020. It jumped to 2.6 million in March 2020 and hit a record six million the following April.
More: German consumers will not be scared off – rising prices are a cause of concern