According to a survey, the number of short-time workers in Germany has fallen below the million mark for the first time since the outbreak of the Corona crisis. It fell in August from 1.06 million in the previous month to 688,000, as the Munich Ifo Institute estimated on Friday based on its monthly business survey and data from the Federal Employment Agency. Accordingly, 2 percent of the dependent employees were still on short-time work, after 3.2 percent in July. "In August, the decline ran through almost all branches of the economy," said Ifo survey expert Stefan Sauer. "The number of short-time workers is below one million for the first time since the beginning of the Corona crisis."
In industry, the supply bottlenecks for preliminary products and raw materials apparently had no noticeable effect on short-time work.
The proportion there fell from 4.2 to 2.7 percent.
However, it is still quite high in the printing industry at 9.7 percent of employees.
In the automotive industry, however, the proportion fell from 3.7 to 2.2 percent: According to the Ifo Institute, around 21,000 employees are currently still on short-time work in one of Germany's most important branches of industry.
Recently there have been reports from major car manufacturers such as Daimler, VW or BMW that the production lines in individual plants or shifts have come to a standstill due to delivery bottlenecks, including for semiconductors.
"Only the hospitality industry still had 10.1 percent short-time work in August, which corresponds to 107,000 people," said Ifo expert Sauer. “However, the number fell considerably here as well.” Because in the previous month this figure was 17.1 percent. In retail, 1.5 percent of employees were most recently affected - around 36,000 people.