Around 725,000 companies have reported their plans to reduce working hours to Agentur für Arbeit branches as of 13 April 2020. The number of companies with short-time working arrangements has risen by almost 12% over the past week. This data is based on special evaluations conducted by the Federal Employment Agency and does not represent the official statistics.
The reports are being sent from almost all industries, but retailers, hotels and catering companies are still the most heavily affected. The BA cannot yet determine how many employees have been affected by short-time working arrangements based on the available data.
BA continues to reshuffle its staff
Over 8,000 BA employees are now processing reported reductions in working hours and paying out short-time working allowance – ten times as many as usual.
Short-time working allowance – paid out by employers and settled by the BA
Whenever a company reduces its employees’ working hours for a month after reporting short-time working arrangements, it pays them for their work and supplements their reduced wage with a short-time working allowance. It then provides the Agentur für Arbeit with a payroll list with the names of all employees on reduced working hours. It has three months to do this by law. Once the documents have been received, they are checked and the short-time working allowance is paid out to the company. As the allowance payments are settled afterwards, the BA only obtains statistical data on the actual number of employees with reduced working hours a few weeks later.
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