Viennese Councillor Renate Brauner has warned of difficult months ahead.
The Social Democrat (SPÖ) said yesterday (Tues) that the city coalition of SPÖ and Greens would be forced to keep fighting unemployment in 2012. The number of Vienna-based jobseekers soared by 4.8 per cent from December 2010 to the same month of 2011. More than 92,500 residents of the capital were looking for work last month.
SPÖ and Greens agreed to increase financial support for people planning to pass compulsory school exams years after having left school. Especially poorly educated people are struggling to find work, research shows. The Viennese government coalition also decided to raise the budget of a programme providing subsidies that trainees should benefit from. SPÖ and Greens are convinced that these labour market initiatives could help lower the city’s jobless rate.
Austria had the lowest unemployment rate among the European Union’s (EU) 27 member states last year, according to SPÖ Labour Minister Rudolf Hundstorfer. The member of the federal coalition between Social Democrats and the People’s Party (ÖVP) said the number of unemployed Austrians dropped by 4.3 per cent from 2010 to the following year. Around 310,000 residents of the country which joined the EU in 1995 had no job last year, according to the minister.
The Viennese Institute for Economic Research (WIFO) and the Institute for Advanced Studies (IHS) warned in December that the domestic unemployment rate could increase in 2012 due to the European economy’s weak state. They explained that great uncertainty regarding the development of the 17 Eurozone members could negatively impact on the labour market. Spain is currently doing worst in keeping the unemployment rate low in the Eurozone. More than one in five residents of the country have no job today. Austria has the lowest jobless rate not only in the Eurozone but the whole EU at four per cent.
The Austrian labour ministry will not be allowed to spend more money on projects and education courses for jobseekers this year due to the tense budget situation. Hundstorfer’s department invested 980 million Euros in 2011. ÖVP Finance Minister Maria Fekter recently stressed that the plan was to spend the same amount this year. She vowed to abstain from cutting back investments into science and research projects. The SPÖ-ÖVP coalition is also determined to keep education spending stable in the coming years despite Austria’s increasing debts.
Brauner’s warning that the Viennese unemployment rate could remain high came one day after a home entertainment and technology company announced its decision to lay off more than 150 workers at its factories in Salzburg. Sony said on Monday the workforce level of its CD and DVD production facilities in the towns of Thalgau and Anif were set to drop by 158. The internationally operating enterprise employs around 1,300 people in the affected factories.
