This article was translated from Arabic. Read the Arabic original
Austria Now News – Vienna
The question of who will pay the roughly €135 million that the Public Employment Service AMS is refunding to around 250,000 people who for years received less unemployment benefit or emergency assistance than they were entitled to has been settled: the Austrian state will cover the amount, as AMS head Petra Draxl and the Finance Ministry confirmed on Monday.
AMS does not fund unemployment insurance itself
Speaking on Ö1’s Mittagsjournal programme, Draxl said the AMS does not bear unemployment insurance alone, explaining that all expenses related to unemployment benefit are charged to the federal government, and that if expenditure exceeds revenue from unemployment insurance contributions, the state covers the difference via the Finance Ministry. She added that the Finance Ministry is aware of the expected amount.
A Finance Ministry spokeswoman confirmed that funding for the back payments is guaranteed by the federal government, and that the AMS’s role is limited to organising the payouts to those entitled.
No special budget
According to a Social Affairs Ministry spokesman quoted by the APA news agency, there is no special budget for these payments. Instead, the money comes from the so-called variable budget, a mechanism that allows the federal government to adjust funding automatically in line with monthly labour market developments.
What does this mean for those entitled?
The case stems from a systematic calculation error uncovered by a lawsuit filed by a woman from Linz: the AMS had deducted the 3 per cent unemployment insurance contribution even from low earners who were not required to pay it in full or at all. The average refund is around €400 per person and can reach about €2,500 in individual cases.
The AMS is reviewing cases automatically and those entitled do not need to submit an application, with the amounts to be paid out during the current year, according to the newspaper Heute.
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Sources
- news.ORF.at, AMS-Chefin Draxl zu Nachzahlungen: Geld kommt vom Staat, 02.11.2026, https://orf.at/stories/3446871/
- Heute, AMS-Rechenpanne – jetzt muss Finanzminister einspringen, 02.11.2026, https://www.heute.at/s/ams-rechenpanne-jetzt-muss-finanzminister-einspringen-120275632
