The German economy has warned of a massive worsening of the shortage of skilled workers in the coming years. “The peak of the shortage of skilled workers is yet to come,” said DIHK President Peter Adrian of the German Press Agency in Berlin.
Employer President Rainer Dulger told the dpa: “The shortage of skilled workers remains a top issue for the German economy and for our competitiveness in the coming years. We need qualified immigration. ” Crafts President Hans Peter Wollseifer told the dpa: “Only with professionally qualified skilled craftsmen are the climate protection goals, the energy efficiency goals, e-mobility, the expansion of the charging stations and the infrastructure possible.” The digital association Bitkom reported that the IT skills gap was growing.
Wollseifer said that almost 2.5 million employees are already working in the trade in the areas of climate and environmental protection, energy efficiency and energy supply, energetic building renovation, the expansion of renewable energies and e-mobility. “But that’s not enough for all of these tasks, that’s not enough.”
18,000 apprenticeship positions in the skilled trades alone are vacant
In the skilled trades alone, around 18,000 apprenticeship positions remained vacant each year, which the companies would like to fill. There was a shortage of applicants, not of the places. “In the past ten years there would have been the opportunity to turn around 200,000 more young people into skilled workers if young people had actually completed an apprenticeship in all of the apprenticeships offered by our companies.” Before the pandemic, the need for skilled workers in the craft was estimated to be at least a quarter of a million.
The President of the Central Association of German Crafts spoke out in favor of a skilled workers initiative. “We have to do everything we can to actually achieve the turnaround towards more appreciation of vocational training as soon as possible, but also specifically towards more young people who choose to pursue professional training. This turnaround must be achieved very quickly so that we do not end up in a situation in which citizens can no longer be adequately supplied with craft services and products. “
The decisive lever for closing the skilled labor gap remains to train more young people in Germany to become qualified specialists. This is why vocational training is the top priority in the focus of political action. “We need a shift in awareness in this direction,” which must come in 2022. “Otherwise the whole thing will get out of hand,” said the craftsman president.
“Recruiting professionally qualified specialists to keep our economy running here is another way,” said Wollseifer. So far, recruitment has focused too much on the academic field. “We did not do enough to try to find professionally qualified people. But even if we are rightly stepping up our efforts here, in my opinion we will not be able to bring tens of thousands of professionally qualified people to Germany every year within a short period of time. “
Employer President Dulger said: “The first cohorts of baby boomers are already retiring.” In 2025, the “demographic turnaround” will come with full force. Then comes the point where more people retire than enter the labor market. Then the contributions or taxes exploded.
Targeted immigration of skilled workers
The new federal government must simplify and accelerate the procedures for a targeted and qualified immigration of skilled workers and remove bureaucratic hurdles, said the President of the Confederation of German Employers’ Associations. «We need a functioning law that enables qualified immigration and that also has an apparatus where applicants can go to any German embassy abroad and say: Who can I contact, I am qualified and would like to immigrate to Germany, so that I and my family can have a good future. “
From the point of view of the Bitkom association, more and more personnel are lacking for the digitization of the economy. Across industries, the number of vacancies for IT specialists rose to 96,000 in 2021, according to the association on Monday with reference to a new study. That is 12 percent more than in the previous year. Two thirds of the companies expected that the IT skills shortage would worsen in the future.
DIHK President Adrian said: “The shortage of skilled workers now runs like a red thread through the economy.” The German Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DIHK) expects a demographically induced decline of three to four million workers by the end of the decade. «There is the question: How can we counteract this? Of course, we want to be very active in order to make the dual training even better and to get young people into an apprenticeship career. “
He would also like more measures to improve the compatibility of family and work, said Adrian. «We have already made progress. But we still have a high proportion of part-time women compared to other European countries. ” In the case of the immigration of skilled workers, a five-digit number per year would be a good thing for the particularly sought-after professionally qualified. To do this, bureaucracy must be reduced, and there are still too great hurdles, for example when issuing visas.