Saturday 23 October 2021
Social educators, carers, drivers
Germany lacks 1.2 million workers
Empty supermarket shelves and petrol stations without petrol: What is happening in Great Britain right now, threatens Germany too, if no measures are taken to counter the shortage of skilled workers. In addition to truck drivers, there is not only a shortage of skilled workers in dozens of professions – there are no newcomers in sight either.
According to a new study, the shortage of skilled workers is greatest in the field of social pedagogy. According to data from the Institute for the German Economy (IW), which was available to “Welt am Sonntag”, the so-called skilled worker gap among social pedagogues is 18,300. This is the difference between job advertisements and job seekers with a suitable profile. It is similarly large with 17,900 for geriatric nurses and 16,700 for nurses.
The list with a total of 15 occupations also includes construction electricians (15,500), plumbing, heating and air conditioning technicians (13,200) and truck drivers (6700). The absolute numbers of missing workers are therefore likely to be considerably higher. The IW calculated its values by comparing the jobs registered with the Federal Employment Agency and the unemployed with suitable qualifications. Only the difference is shown as a skilled worker gap. Often, however, tenders and potential interested parties do not go together at all – for example because of spatial distances or other hurdles.
The IW placed a special focus on truck drivers. When the Corona crisis partially brought the economy to a standstill, the shortage of skilled workers among professional drivers went back to zero in the short term. According to IW, it is therefore remarkable that thousands are missing again – and the trend is rising sharply. The demographic problem is dramatic here: only 13.6 percent of drivers were last under 35 years of age. The average for all employees subject to social insurance contributions is 29.3 percent. So there is a lack of offspring.
Skilled workers shortage in 70 professions
“That will slow down future economic upturns,” says IW skilled worker expert Alexander Burstedde. Countermeasures must now be taken. The expert warns: “Otherwise we are threatened with conditions like the current situation in Great Britain.” In the UK, there has been a shortage of fuel at many petrol pumps in recent weeks due to a lack of tanker truck drivers. In addition, there is a lack of slaughterhouse workers, which is why the farmers fear for their animals to be sold. Because of the logistical problems, many shelves in supermarkets are left unfilled.
According to the employment agency, there is a lack of staff in dozens of professions in Germany. “A total of around 1.2 million workers, two thirds of them skilled workers, are currently being sought,” said Detlef Scheele, head of the Federal Employment Agency, of “Welt am Sonntag”. There are already personnel bottlenecks at the “skilled worker level” in around 70 professions.
To combat the shortage of skilled workers, medium-sized businesses are urgently calling for more skilled workers to immigrate from abroad. “More and more companies in all industries are currently unable to find skilled workers or trainees. This fundamentally jeopardizes the competitiveness of medium-sized companies and thus of Germany as a whole,” said the Federal Managing Director of the Federal Association of Medium-Sized Enterprises (BVMW), Markus Jerger, to the newspapers of the Funke media group. “We need the targeted immigration of skilled workers.”
60,000 vacant training positions
Many companies would have to reject orders because of a lack of skilled workers, said Jerger. It doesn’t look any better for the trainees. “There are more than 390 recognized training occupations in Germany and there is a shortage of new trainees in almost all of them.” According to Jerger, almost 60,000 training positions could not be filled at the start of the 2020 training year.
According to another study by the IW, however, there is also a lack of professional recruiting of skilled workers in companies. “Only 32.4 percent of all companies operate a distinctly strategic HR work”, revealed a study by the competence center securing skilled workers of the IW Cologne among 1433 companies. However, it would be important to develop targeted analyzes of your own strengths and weaknesses as well as new ways of recruiting and qualifying employees. The smaller the companies, the less the personnel work is expanded.