Short-time work allowance: Employment agency expects billions in payments for Bavaria

The short-time work regulation secured countless jobs nationwide in Germany during the corona pandemic.

But the insurance benefit goes into the money - also in Bavaria.

Munich - Since the outbreak of the Corona * pandemic in spring 2020, the employment agencies in Bavaria have spent a total of around 6.9 billion euros on short-time work benefits and the corresponding social security contributions. This emerges from an overview of the Bavarian regional directorate of the Federal Employment Agency (BA, as of June 30), which

available. By the end of the year, the corresponding amount should rise to around eight billion euros, added a BA spokeswoman on Monday to

.

According to this, the companies in the Free State had submitted around 176,450 applications for short-time allowance in the past year alone. By far the greatest increase was in April 2020. At that time, a good 110,000 applications for a total of 1.5 million employees were received within a month. At that time, 102,000 companies with around 1.1 million employees actually made use of the regulation in the Free State. The spokeswoman said that in April 2020, half of all working hours were lost across Bavaria.

After a temporary decrease in applications for short-time work by the end of October 2020, there was another increase between November and February 2021.

Since then, "the advertisements on short-time work have declined significantly," it said.

For the summer, one expects a further decline.

However, one has to wait and see how the situation develops in autumn.

This depends above all on whether there is a possible fourth corona wave, said the spokeswoman.

Short-time work: Complex tests

In Bavaria, the BA has already started the first final exams.

After the short-time work expires, the authority checks whether the short-time work money was paid correctly and in the correct amount.

The spokeswoman said that around 175,000 applications were made in the Free State.

The reviews should be completed by the end of 2023, it said.

It was only at the weekend that Federal Labor Minister Hubertus Heil

signaled his readiness to

to extend the simplified access to the short-time work regulation beyond September, should economic difficulties arise due to a fourth corona wave.

Short-time work: money from unemployment insurance

The federal government last extended the simplified access to short-time allowance in June.

According to the current regulation, a company can register short-time work if at least ten percent of the employees are affected by the loss of work;

usually 30 percent.

Short-time work allowance is a benefit from unemployment insurance. It is intended to help companies in the event of a “significant loss of work” to reduce personnel costs and avoid layoffs or even bankruptcy.