According to a new study, the shortage of skilled workers is greatest in the field of social pedagogy.
According to data from the Institut der deutschen Wirtschaft (IW), which was submitted to “Welt am Sonntag” (WamS), 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 for geriatric nurses (17,900) and nurses (16,700).
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.
"Conditions like the one in Great Britain threaten"
“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, WamS.
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 sectors are currently finding neither skilled workers nor trainees. This fundamentally endangers the competitiveness of medium-sized companies and thus Germany as a location 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."
Many companies would have to reject orders due to a lack of skilled workers, said Jerger. It doesn't look any better for the trainees. “There are more than 390 recognized apprenticeships in Germany, and in almost all of them there is a shortage of new apprentices.” According to Jerger, almost 60,000 apprenticeships could not be filled at the start of the 2020 apprenticeship 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 (Kofa) of the IW Cologne among 1,433 companies.
However, it would be important to develop targeted analyzes of one's 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.