2023-06-26 09:52:53
Specialists are desperately needed in Germany – with consequences: The lack of suitable specialists is slowing down the economy. How do experts assess further developments?
The lack of suitable specialist staff continues to be one of the biggest obstacles to economic development in Germany. This is the result of the current skilled labor barometer of the state banking group KfW for the first half of 2023.
In the service sector there is the greatest shortage, regionally eastern Germany is particularly affected, in Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland, on the other hand, the situation is more favorable. Large companies suffer more than smaller ones. Overall, more than 42 percent of the companies surveyed complained about a shortage of skilled workers. Around three quarters of legal and tax advisors report a shortage of skilled workers.
According to the KfW study, the economic slowdown as a result of the energy and Ukraine crisis has temporarily eased the problem of skilled workers. In the long term, however, it has been shown that despite the corona crisis and the consequences of the Ukraine war, the situation is much more tense than it was in 2021.
“Even if the proportion of companies that see their business activities hampered by a shortage of skilled workers has decreased as a result of the economic slowdown, the situation remains the same: the shortage of skilled workers is still hampering a large part of the economy in Germany in absolute terms and in historical comparison,” said KfW’s chief economist Fritzi Koehler-Geib.
It is currently to be expected that the economy will gradually recover from the price shock over the course of the year. “The shortage of skilled workers is likely to increase again at the end of the year if the recovery continues,” emphasized Köhler-Geib. It is urgent to tackle the shortage of skilled workers by increasing productivity, by mobilizing employable people in Germany and by targeted immigration. The KfW Skilled Labor Barometer is published twice a year, in early summer and autumn. (dpa)
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