Short-Time Work: The German Answer to the Great Recession

Karl Brenke (), Ulf Rinne () and Klaus F. Zimmermann ()
Additional contact information
Karl Brenke: DIW Berlin

No 5780, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)

Abstract: Short-time work was the "German answer" to the economic crisis. The number of short-time workers strongly increased in the recession and peaked at more than 1.5 million. Without the extensive use of short-time work, unemployment would have risen by approximately twice as much as it actually did. Short-time work has certainly contributed to the mild response of the German labor market to the crisis, but this is likely due to the country-specific context. Although the crisis has been overcome and employment is strongly expanding, modified regulations governing short-time work are still in place. This leads to undesired side effects.

Keywords: partially unemployed workers; labor market policy; short-time work compensation; economic crisis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J65 J68 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec, nep-lab and nep-ltv
Date: 2011-06
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations View citations in EconPapers (4) Track citations by RSS feed

Forthcoming in: International Labour Review, 2013, 152 (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://ftp.iza.org/dp5780.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Short-Time Work: The German Answer to the Great Recession (2011)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5780

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
Address: IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Mark Fallak ().