Sunday, May 2nd, 2021
65,000 employees are missing
The skilled workers are running out of skilled workers
Craft businesses in Germany are struggling with the shortage of skilled workers: Vacancies can often no longer be filled with journeymen or masters. This primarily has economic consequences for companies, and orders are lost. Many vacant apprenticeships could make the problem even worse in the future.
Many craft businesses in Germany find it difficult to find enough employees, even in the Corona crisis. There is currently a shortage of 54,000 journeymen across Germany, as shown by a study by the Institute for the German Economy (IW), which was also reported by the “Rheinische Post”. Overall, the study puts the shortage of skilled workers in the skilled trades at almost 65,000 workers. Customers therefore often have to accept long waiting times and companies miss out on orders.
Craftsmen with a master craftsman’s certificate are even more difficult to find than journeymen. “Both as company successors and as employees, master craftsmen and women are desperately wanted. The need for skilled workers is huge,” said the President of the Central Association of German Crafts (ZDH), Hans Peter Wollseifer. According to the study, 5500 master craftsman positions are currently unoccupied. The shortage of skilled workers is particularly great in the construction sector, among other things. In building electronics, there were only 24 unemployed people with the right qualifications for every 100 vacancies in 2020. The shortage of skilled workers in the plumbing, heating and air conditioning technology is just as dramatic.
The sale of meat products is also affected by the shortage of skilled workers. According to the study, masters are particularly scarce in medical, orthopedic and rehabilitation technology as well as in civil engineering. The corona crisis made itself felt differently in the individual craft industries. Hairdressers, opticians and hearing aid acousticians would have suffered severe sales losses as a result of the lockdowns. Therefore, the demand for labor in these industries has fallen below the level of before the pandemic. In contrast, many companies in the building trade have recovered comparatively quickly from the crisis, so that the demand for labor in this area in December 2020 was again above the pre-crisis level.
The trade has difficulties in allocating all apprenticeships. The proportion of vacant apprenticeship positions is higher in the craft than in other training areas. The craft still struggled with an image problem among young people. “Young people know far too little about the diverse and future-proof possibilities in the handicraft”, complained ZDH President Wollseifer. There are numerous skilled trades with “career options that are in no way inferior to those of a degree”.
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