Youth unemployment in Baden-Württemberg is rising particularly sharply – Freiburg

The consequences of the Corona crisis are driving up the number of unemployed in Baden-Württemberg. However, the increase is noticeably flattening compared to the previous months.

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The consequences of the Corona crisis are driving up the number of unemployed in Baden-Württemberg. However, the increase is noticeably flattening compared to the previous months. The number of companies that register short-time work is no longer increasing as much as before. Young people are currently particularly affected by unemployment.

Many were just finishing their training or studying and were hoping for a job, said the regional directorate of the Federal Employment Agency (BA) in Stuttgart on Wednesday. In June, 276,492 people in Baden-Württemberg were unemployed – 2.3 percent more than in May. Before that, there had been much stronger increases: plus 8 percent in May and plus 17 percent in April.

The unemployment rate is now 4.4 percent

A look at the previous year shows how much Corona has the job market under control: Compared to June 2019, the number of unemployed is now 45.5 percent higher. According to the BA, unemployment among young people rose by 75 percent to 27,456 young people. Employment Agency Managing Director Martina Musati therefore called on companies to give career starters a chance: “This is the only way that young people can become the technical experts of tomorrow that we urgently need in Baden-Württemberg as a business location.”

“We must and will do everything we can to ensure that today’s young people do not become tomorrow’s unemployed,” said Minister for Economic Affairs, Nicole Hoffmeister-Kraut (CDU), and referred to the help for small and medium-sized training companies. “There shouldn’t be a Corona generation,” warned Martin Kunzmann, head of the German Trade Union Federation (DGB).

Short-time work record in April

Since the outbreak of the Corona crisis in March, almost 120,000 companies in Baden-Württemberg have reported short-time work for more than two million employees. There are more than twelve million employees nationwide. In addition to the 11.8 million in March, April and May, there were again short-time working notifications for 342,000 people in June, as the Federal Employment Agency in Nuremberg announced on Wednesday.

In April, short-time work had jumped to the highest level ever reached in the Federal Republic, reported BA boss Detlef Scheele. According to this, 6.83 million people were on short-time work in April – after 2.49 million in March. For May, Scheele expects 6 million. The forecast of the Federal Agency is thus below that of the Munich Ifo Institute, which had determined 7.3 million short-time workers for May and 6.7 million for June. Experience shows, however, that companies register more short-time working than is actually implemented. Billing is done with a three month delay.

Federal Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD) said the figures from Nuremberg showed that short-time work continues to help very much to keep people in work. The increase in unemployment in June was small in an international comparison. But the figures also showed that the economy must now be restarted quickly. “The federal government’s economic stimulus package is therefore the right answer to the crisis,” said Heil. In the current year, the BA has spent 7.847 billion euros on short-time work. In the whole of 2019 it was only 200 million euros. The number of Hartz IV recipients also increased in the corona pandemic: Their number was 4.076 million in June – 152,000 more than in June 2019. According to the BA, 7.5 percent of people of working age were on the in June Help instructed.

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