After three years of high deficits, the Federal Employment Agency will again present a balanced budget for 2023. The budget of the Nuremberg authority with 105,000 employees will include revenue of 42.6 billion euros, said the chairwoman of the federal agency, Andrea Nahles, on Friday in Nuremberg. This is offset by expenditure of 40.6 billion euros. A federal loan of around 800 million euros, which was granted to balance the 2022 budget, is to be repaid from the surplus.
In addition, the federal agency wants to start building a reserve again. The cushion of around 26 billion euros had melted to zero during the pandemic. According to experts, the federal agency needs a reserve of around 25 billion euros as an effective reserve for emergency situations. Rebuilding this will take years, said Nahles.
The basis for the budget planning was the autumn forecast of the federal government. In its planning, the Federal Agency is assuming a slight increase in unemployment to 2.5 million next year and an annual average of 200,000 short-time workers – still well above the level before the corona pandemic. Despite economic problems, the labor market has proven to be robust. “We can also assume that for next year,” said Nahles.
Agency: Very good employment situation
The income will be significantly higher next year than in 2022. The reason for this is, on the one hand, the return to the statutory contribution rate of 2.6 percent – the contribution was temporarily reduced to 2.4 percent in 2019 and will return to the old level in early 2023. On the other hand, the employment situation is very good – which flushes high income from contributions into the coffers of the BA.
In terms of spending, the Federal Agency wants to place a clear focus on further training in addition to digitization. “We want to make any meaningful and eligible further training possible,” she emphasized. The federal agency will use around eight billion euros for active employment promotion in the current year. “That’s why we’re putting a shovel on top of that for next year,” said Nahles. 9.6 billion euros are planned for 2023. “We all have to know that we have a shortage of skilled workers in front of our chests,” said the chair of the BA board of directors, employer representative Christina Ramb.
The Federal Employment Agency plans 900 million euros for insolvency money in the next year – this means no increase compared to the approach in the current year. In the years 2021 and 2022, significantly less money was actually needed to cushion company bankruptcies. Together with her co-chair Anja Piel, she criticized the federal government for using the agency too much for administrative processes beyond its actual tasks. It cannot be that the BA becomes the “Federal Agency for Administration of the Federal Government,” said Ramb, with a view to the tasks of the Nuremberg authority, for example in the payment of relief in the energy crisis.
