Thursday, November 4th, 2021
It’s getting worse and worse
End in sight if there is a shortage of skilled workers
Companies have long complained of a shortage of skilled workers. But the situation is even worse than expected, as an analysis by the Bertelsmann Stiftung shows. Immigration is hardly a remedy.
German companies are suffering from an even greater shortage of qualified workers than assumed a year ago. In a Civey survey on behalf of the Bertelsmann Foundation, two-thirds (66 percent) of company decision-makers said that they are currently short of skilled workers. To put it into perspective: In the foundation’s skilled worker migration monitor from the end of 2020, a little more than half of the companies surveyed (54 percent) feared that they would lack staff this year.
The location differs, however, depending on the industry, region, job description and qualification. It is particularly noticeable that the skilled labor gap is greatest among people who have completed vocational training: 48 percent of the companies surveyed report a shortage, while only 27 percent complain about a lack of academics.
A look at the sectors shows that the care sector and the health sector are particularly hard hit by the shortage of skilled workers. From a regional perspective, there are bottlenecks in all federal states – however, they are higher in Bavaria or Rhineland-Palatinate, for example, and tend to be less pronounced in Berlin, for example.
According to the results, a trend reversal is not to be expected, on the contrary: 67 percent of the companies surveyed assume that they will have fewer skilled workers than they need in the coming year. “The shortage of skilled workers is worsening, and there is no end in sight. We as a society need sustainable solutions to cope with demographic change and the socio-ecological transformation. Immigration plays an important role alongside training and further education,” says Matthias Mayer , Migration expert from the Bertelsmann Foundation.
Targeted immigration can help
However, only 16 percent of the companies surveyed rely on the recruitment of skilled workers from abroad. Training in-house, good models for reconciling family and work, as well as further training opportunities play a much greater role. There are various reasons for this reluctance. The companies most frequently cite language barriers, the difficulty in assessing foreign qualifications and misconceptions on the part of applicants.
In Mayer’s view, the Skilled Workers Immigration Act passed at the beginning of 2020 offers a good basis. It is crucial to finally implement the instruments anchored in it consistently and in a practical manner – for example, to make skills acquired abroad more comprehensible and easier to recognize. “The high demand for workers who have completed their training shows that Germany should make better use of the opportunities provided by the Skilled Workers Immigration Act in order to be more focused on finding foreign skilled workers with intermediate qualifications for those sectors in which the shortage is particularly great,” says Mayer.
Training partnerships between the Federal Republic of Germany and other countries can make a significant contribution to this. Their aim is to better reconcile foreign qualifications with the German system of dual vocational training and to improve mutual understanding between companies and workers willing to immigrate.