Law Change: Additional income during short-time work

As a matter of principle, if an employee on short-time work has a secondary employment, the income from that secondary employment will be factored into the calculation of the short-term work allowance they are entitled to.

The legislator has now introduced a temporary exception from this principle:

A special arrangement applies from April 1 to October 31, 2020. During this period, anyone who takes up (secondary) employment in a so-called system-relevant occupation (e.g. health care, food trade, agriculture, etc.) while being on short-time work will be exempt from having the remuneration earned from this secondary employment offset against the short-time work allowance. The requirement for this is, however, that the total income consisting of salary and short-time work allowance does not exceed the employee’s normal net income.

It is also important that such additional income is exempt from unemployment insurance contributions.

The temporary law change is intended to support system-relevant sectors of the economy and to give employees on short-time work the opportunity to compensate for their financial losses.