The Austrian Labor Market and the Great Recession: Developments and Measures Taken

Alfred Stiglbauer ()

Monetary Policy & the Economy, 2010, issue 3, 25–44

Abstract: As the international financial and economic crisis unfolded, labor market conditions in Austria started to deteriorate in mid-2008, marking the onset of one of the severest crisis episodes in the Austrian labor market since World War II. Its effects have been surprisingly small, however, considering the scale of the decline in real economic activity. The reason for this moderate impact was that total hours worked declined more sharply than headcount employment. The working hour reductions were much more substantial than can be explained by short-time work alone, though. An international comparison shows country differences in the extent to which the decline in employment was based on reductions in headcount or hours worked per employee. Austria and Germany are among those countries in which hours worked declined most sharply, which made it possible to keep more people in employment. Even though labor market conditions in Austria have been improving over the past few months, unemployment figures and the number of participants in training programs by the Austrian Public Employment Service are still higher than they were before the crisis. Employment figures, too, have not yet returned to precrisis levels..

Keywords: labor demand; recession; public policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 J22 J48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.oenb.at/dam/jcr:026ff808-41f2-482f-8b0 ... s02_tcm16-212050.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:onb:oenbmp:y:2010:i:3:b:2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
Oesterreichische Nationalbank, Documentation Management and Communications Services, Otto-Wagner Platz 3, A-1090 Vienna, Austria

Access Statistics for this article

Monetary Policy & the Economy is currently edited by Gerhard Fenz and Maria Teresa Valderrama

More articles in Monetary Policy & the Economy from Oesterreichische Nationalbank (Austrian Central Bank) P.O. Box 61, A-1011 Vienna, Austria. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Rita Glaser-Schwarz ().