Innsbruck – Due to the travel restrictions for Tyrol, the AMS has stopped the supra-regional placement of workers in the state. “Due to the repeated lockdowns and the current lack of winter season, the need for these supra-regionally placed people from Eastern Austria has decreased significantly,” confirms Bernhard Pichler, Head of Service for Companies at AMS Tirol. 39,527 people are currently registered as unemployed at AMS Tirol, many of them in the tourism sector. Of the 45,971 people who are on short-time work in Tyrol, many are also from the hospitality / tourism sector. “In addition, the number of vacancies registered with AMS Tirol has fallen by around a quarter,” says Pichler.

In the previous year there was already a far lower supra-regional placement than in 2019. While 41,450 jobseekers were placed back then, there were only 28,721 in 2020, a decrease of 31 percent. According to the AMS, the strongest year-on-year decline was in April at 89 percent. In January 2021, the decrease compared to January 2020 was 74 percent, although at the beginning of last year the coronavirus still seemed far away in this country – while this year was welcomed in lockdown. In view of the high unemployment figures, the Tyrolean Chamber of Labor boss Erwin Zangerl demands that the emergency aid must continue to flow in the amount of the unemployment benefit. Unemployment benefit should also be 70 percent instead of 55 percent of the assessment base. “Even if the first success is to be recorded and the emergency assistance is to be increased to the level of unemployment benefit by March 31,” this must apply longer, according to Zangerl, because unemployment would not disappear from one month to the next.

Meanwhile, the AMS offers a “huge further education program”, says AMS boss Johannes Kopf, also in tourism. The fear of some tourism professionals that the long lockdown would mean that employees would look for other industries is “a little exaggerated”. (ver)