Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner apparently wants to significantly reduce state benefits for the long-term unemployed in the future. This emerges from the draft budget for 2023, from which the “Spiegel” reports. According to this, “benefits for integration into work” in the basic security for job seekers are to be reduced from around 4.8 billion to 4.2 billion euros. This corresponds to a reduction of 609 million euros.
According to the report, Linder apparently intends to largely reduce the money for multi-year funding in the medium term. The so-called “social labor market” is also said to be affected, a subsidy under Section 16i of the Second Social Code.
It enables particularly “tough cases” among the long-term unemployed to have full-time employment that is subject to social security contributions. Employers receive subsidies for this for five years – in the first two years the state pays the full wages of the employees. After that, the funding decreases by ten percent every year.
According to the Federal Employment Agency, around 42,000 people are currently being supported by the “social labor market”. Between 2019 and 2021, the former federal government planned costs of around four billion euros. With the planned cuts, the “social labor market” measure should no longer be able to be financed.
According to the report, there was great criticism of Lindner’s project from the left-wing faction. Social Policy spokeswoman Jessica Tatti said the cut was “a blatant declaration of bankruptcy”. “Instead of compulsively sticking to the debt brake, the federal government must finally tax the massive excess profits of the corporations in this crisis.”
