The Corona crisis did not affect the Main Franconian labor market as much as was sometimes feared. This is shown by the statistics published by the employment agencies in Würzburg and Schweinfurt. The region “got through the pandemic year 2020 with a black eye”, says Würzburg’s agency boss Stefan Beil.
On an annual average, 17,600 people were registered as unemployed in Main Franconia in 2020, 3,400 more than in 2019. The rates in the agency districts of Würzburg / Kitzingen / Main-Spessart and Schweinfurt / Bad Kissingen / Haßberge / Rhön-Grabfeld fell by 0.6 compared to 2019 Percentage points up – to 2.9 and 3.6 percent respectively. Beil’s conclusion: “The consequences of the Corona crisis in particular have meant that the labor market could no longer follow the positive trend of the past few years.”
The city of Schweinfurt, which is heavily influenced by industry, is an outlier in the statistics. The unemployment rate there in 2020 was seven percent. For comparison: 3.4 percent were in Lower Franconia, 3.6 percent in Bavaria and 5.9 percent in Germany.
The development in 2020 was like a rollercoaster ride: if the labor market was counted at the beginning of the year, mainly for economic reasons, it fell sharply in spring due to the pandemic: the unemployment figures skyrocketed, especially in April and May.
Then the labor market came under pressure again after a “short phase of stabilization” due to the second wave of infections towards the end of the year, said the Schweinfurt employment agency. Würzburg reports something similar.
Over the year, short-time work has proven to be the lifeline par excellence. This state-sponsored instrument has reached an unprecedented level and “secured employment in the region and thus prevented even higher unemployment,” said agency boss Beil.
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The peak month was April, when nearly 4,000 companies in the Würzburg agency sought short-time work for a total of 41,000 employees. For comparison: In the course of the financial crisis of 2008/2009, there were at the top 11,000 employees in 240 companies.
Compared to 2019, unemployment among young people in particular increased last year. According to the information in the Würzburg / Kitzingen / Main-Spessart area, there was an increase of almost 40 percent among the under 25s.
In the Schweinfurt / Main-Rhön area, 3254 companies were affected by short-time work in April, according to the employment agency. With 38,000 employees there, the number of those affected peaked in May. This means that 30 percent of the companies in this region and 22 percent of all employees had to go on short-time work. The agency assumes that this saved 10,000 jobs.
“It is positive that it has so far been possible to maintain most of the jobs and the efficient structures of many companies,” says Schweinfurt’s agency boss Thomas Stelzer. But it is also a fact that in 2020 the number of employees subject to social security contributions in the Schweinfurt employment agency has decreased for the first time in eleven years – by one percent compared to 2019. The reason is that companies have tended to refrain from hiring new staff. so stilts. According to the agency, the number of vacancies averaged 3831 in 2020, 23 percent less than in the previous year.
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