Partial Unemployment Requests Approved for 7.5k Employees in February

Luxembourg's Economic Committee (Comité de Conjoncture) has granted provisional requests for short-time work (partial unemployment) for 7,514 employees for February 2024.

The Economic Committee met on Monday 29 January 2024, under the chairmanship of Luxembourg's Minister of the Economy, SMEs, Energy and Tourism, Lex Delles, and the Minister of Labour, Georges Mischo. The committee first analysed the national economic situation and that of the labour market for the month of January 2024.

The Economic Committee then studied the forecast requests for partial unemployment for the month of February 2024. There were 21 fewer requests submitted compared to the previous month. A total of 95 companies submitted a provisional request for partial unemployment in order to benefit from the provisions of this measure in February. Note that the final decision on the allocation of this support rests with the Government Council (Cabinet).

After analysing the applications submitted, the Economic Committee ruled favourably on 76 requests. Among these requests, 56 came from a cyclical source, eleven were linked to a structural source (i.e. a job retention plan) and nine were motivated by economic dependence. The number of employees concerned amounts to 7,514 full-time jobs, compared to 8,045 the previous month.

These figures are indicative and concern the forecast number of impacted employees; they therefore do not represent a concrete indicator of the economic situation. As such, the Economic Committee also provides information on the number of employees who have actually benefited from the measure. This assessment can be done three months after the forecast requests made upstream. Once a forecast request has been favourably notified, companies have two months to submit the number of actually unemployed hours to the ADEM employment agency.

Concerning the requests for partial unemployment for October 2023, notified one month earlier, out of the 88 forecast approved requests, 57 actually resorted to partial unemployment. This also includes three applications still currently under investigation, thus bringing the number of confirmed cases to 54.

In total, out of 8,586 full-time employees for whom partial unemployment had been provisionally approved for October 2023, currently 2,610 employees (up from 1,707 in September 2023) are actually unemployed. The actual unemployed hours declared for the month of October 2023 amounted to 100,198, compared to 64,507 for the previous month. The cost for the Employment Fund (Fonds pour l'Emploi) for October 2023 amounted to €1,980,000, compared to €722,500 in September 2023.

The Economic Committee also advised on two job retention plans, only one of which was approved, and rejected one recovery plan.

The Economic Committee later issued two positive opinions in relation to the legal provisions regarding early retirement concerning a total of 259 employees. The committee proposed a rate of participation in the cost of early retirement for each of the applications.

Moreover, the Economic Committee issued a positive opinion following a request for tax exemption for voluntary redundancy compensation concerning twelve people.

The next meetings of the Economic Committee will take place on Monday 19 and Monday 26 February 2024.