The Economic Committee met on Tuesday 23 May 2023, under the joint chairmanship of Luxembourg's Minister of the Economy, Franz Fayot, and the Minister of Labour, Employment and the Social and Solidarity Economy, Georges Engel, to analyse the labour market situation for the month of April 2023 and the national economic situation.
The Economic Committee studied the forecast requests for partial unemployment for the month of June 2023. The number of requests submitted increased by two units compared to the previous month. A total of 92 companies have submitted a provisional request for partial unemployment in order to be able to benefit from the provisions of this measure for the month of June 2023.
After analysing the files submitted, the Economic Committee approved 81 requests. Of these requests, 60 came from a temporary source, fourteen were linked to a structural source, i.e. a job retention plan and seven requests were motivated by an economic dependence. These requests estimated the number of employees concerned at 8,286 full-time equivalent jobs (down from 8,674 the previous month).
These figures are indicative and relate to the projected number of employees affected, so they do not represent a concrete indicator of the economic situation. This is why the Economic Committee will henceforth also provide information on the number of employees who have actually benefited from the measure. This assessment can be done three months after the provisional requests made upstream. Once a forecast demand has been favourably advised, companies have two months to introduce a count of the hours actually not worked with ADEM.
Concerning short-time work requests for the month of February 2023, advised during the January 2023 Economic Committee meeting, out of the 85 provisional requests advised favourably, 52 companies, in reality, resorted to short-time work. In total, in these 52 counts, 78,910 hours were declared unemployed for 1,330 employees.
The Economic Committee rejected a new recovery plan.
Finally, the Economic Committee also approved two requests for tax exemption of voluntary severance pay, concerning eighteen people in total.
The next Economic Committee meeting will take place on Friday 26 June 2023.
