Image: VOLKER WEIHBOLD (FOTOKERSCHI.AT / KERSCHBAUMMAYR)
With 37,711 unemployed, around 500 fewer people were registered as unemployed in Upper Austria than a year ago at this time. Compared to the previous year, employment continued to grow by around 6,500 to 683,000 employees. This results in an unemployment rate of 5.2 percent, which is 0.2 percentage points less than in the previous year.
The Public Employment Service (AMS) reports that a significant decline was achieved, especially among long-term unemployed people: at around 6,500, this number is almost a third below the level in January 2022 (9,700). Governor Thomas Stelzer and Economics Minister Markus Achleitner point out that around 2,000 fewer people have been unemployed for more than twelve months than in January 2020, immediately before the outbreak of the corona pandemic.
It is interesting that almost every third unemployed person in Upper Austria has a job offer – either from the new employer or from the previous one who has only been out of work for a short time.
The labor market is “still” holding
Nationwide, the Unemployment rate at the end of January 7.6 percent. This is the lowest value since 2008. Labor Minister Martin Kocher (ÖVP) referred to the robustness of the labor market in a broadcast: “This trend will continue at the beginning of 2023, and we will continue to see a positive development on the labour market.”
John Head, the head of the labor market service (AMS), was a little more cautious than Minister Kocher in a broadcast from the labor market service. It is true that January unemployment fell by around 15,000 people (to 390,000) compared to the same month last year. “But the emphasis here is clearly on the word ‘yet’,” said Kopf. “It is to be expected that we will have to observe a slight increase in unemployment figures in the first quarter.” Nationwide, the number of immediately available jobs is already declining compared to the previous year, but not yet in Upper Austria.
The General Secretary of the Federation of Industry, Christoph Neumayer, pointed out that the number of 107,000 job vacancies is still very high. There are more than 250,000 job offers on the AMS job platform “alle jobs”.
Source: Nachrichten
