By mid-June, the number or recipients of earnings-related allowance had gone down by more than 20% from mid-May. Out of the remaining recipients, 30% received lay-off period daily allowance. The share of laid-off persons was 19% in mid-May. By the end of the month, however, the number had risen to 40%. Typically, the number of applications for earnings-related allowance goes down during the summer months at the Open Unemployment Fund.
Mid-May figures indicated a downturn in the number of applications for earnings-related allowance at the Open Unemployment Fund. This forecast was confirmed at the end of the month. In May, 11.8% of all Open Unemployment Fund members received earnings-related allowance from the fund, a substantial drop from April. Regardless of the decline, the number or recipients remained 20% higher than in May last year. Similarly, earnings-related allowance costs went down from the 48.1 million euros of the previous month to 37.7 million. Despite this considerable drop, earnings-related allowance costs were still 4.7% higher than in the same month last year.
In May, the Open Unemployment Fund paid out earnings-related allowance to 28,636 members, nearly 4,000 members less than in April. And while the number of recipients of earnings-related allowance increased by 20% compared to May of last year, it is still a much more moderate rise than the corresponding April figure of 30.5%. Last year, the number of recipients took a downward turn after March, but this year the turn took place a month later and was considerably sharper.
The number of laid-off persons seemed to take a sharp downward turn in mid-May, with their share among the recipients at 19% at the time. By the end of the month, however, the share lay-off period daily allowance recipients out of all daily allowance recipients again increased, reaching 40%. It should be noted that while the total number of laid-off persons did go down a bit from the first half of the month, the considerable decrease in the total number of all recipients caused the share of laid-off persons to remain high. Out of the recipients of lay-off period daily allowance, 16% were women and 84% men.
The share of recipients of adjusted daily allowance has remained close to 13% throughout the year, but May saw it climb to 16%.
Earnings-related allowance costs down
In May, earnings-related allowance costs returned to the decreasing trend that began at the start of the year. In May, earnings-related allowance costs were 37.7. million euros, 10.4 million less than in April. Despite this considerable drop, earnings-related allowance costs were still 4.7% higher than in the same month last year. If this trend mirrors previous years, earnings-related allowance costs will continue to go down during the next two months.
Number of payout days back to a downward trend
The downward trend from January through March in number of payout days came to an end in April when the number of days increased to 19. Now back to a downward trend in May, the number of payout days stood at 17.7, representing a major decrease of 12.4% compared to May last year.
In May, A-kassa received a total of 33,796 earnings-related allowance applications, 6,455 applications less than in April. However, this still represents an increase of 14% compared to May last year. Most of the applications, 61.3%, were follow-up applications. The share of first-time applications went down from April, standing now at 5.9%. Applications for adjusted allowance made up 32.8% of all applications.
A-kassa continued to improve its processing time in May. First-time applications had an average processing time of 6.5 days in May, down 2.1 days from April. And with a processing time of 4.6 days, applications for adjusted allowance were also processed quicker.
Lots of positive feedback for our customer service
Our phone service received a total of 6,429 calls in May, with an average response time of 2:13 minutes. Based on our phone service feedback survey, 76% of respondents were highly satisfied and 20% quite satisfied with the service.
We received 4,205 messages via our eService in May, down 14% from April. Our chat service hosted a total of 894 discussions in May, with an average queuing time of 34 seconds and an average discussion length of 11:14 minutes. Based on our chat service feedback survey, 74% of respondents were highly satisfied and 16% quite satisfied with A-kassa’s service.
Monthly statistical summaries are available at the A-kassa website
