40 million Europeans went on forced vacation with state support

Due to coronavirus, more than 40 million workers in Europe were on a forced vacation, which involves covering part of their drop-down revenues, Bloomberg reports . If this support was not there, the unemployment rate would jump to historical maximums, the publication notes.

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Bloomberg journalists analyzed the data of the six largest European economies - Great Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands - and came to the conclusion that the crisis affected about 40 million people. If the state did not cover the income, the level of unemployment in four of these countries (Germany, France, Italy, Spain) would exceed 40% at the peak. The total amount of support in the six largest countries in Europe amounted to about 100 billion euros.

At the same time, unemployment is still growing: in April, a record jump in the number of applications for unemployment benefits was recorded in Germany - they were submitted by 373 thousand people. In Spain, the number of applications in March-April jumped by 600 thousand, writes Bloomberg.

According to McKinsey, the unemployment rate in the EU as a whole will grow to 7.6% from 6.5% in February. If negative scenario is implemented and quarantine measures are preserved all summer, this indicator will be 11%, and the level of 2019 will not be able to return earlier than 2024.

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In Russia, the level of registered unemployment is less than 5%: according to Rosstat for December 2019 - February 2020, only 3.5 million people were officially unemployed.

At the same time, according to the calculations of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry (TTP), at the end of March, under the threat of closing due to the economic consequences of coronavirus, 3 million entrepreneurs turned out to be, more than 8.6 million people risk losing their work.

If this happens, growth will become a record in the history of modern Russia. For comparison, during the 2008 crisis, unemployment jumped 26%. According to April 22, Moscow has already increased by 45% in just three weeks. This can be a serious test for the employment service: its number does not allow to “digest” more than 1 million per year in the country as a whole, the director of the HSE Social Policy Institute Lilia Ovcharova told The Bell.