Germany is desperately looking for skilled workers - but many training companies find it difficult to recruit young people.
Shortly after the start of the new training year, almost 40 percent of the training positions on offer were still vacant, as a representative company survey published on Thursday by the Nuremberg Institute for Employment Research (IAB) showed.
Britta Beeger
Editor in business.
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The companies cite a lack of applications or suitable candidates as the main reasons.
According to the survey, 36 percent of the companies eligible for training offered apprenticeship positions for the new training year, but only 61 percent of these were able to be filled.
In smaller companies with fewer than 50 employees, almost every second training position remained vacant.
In addition, the construction industry (60 percent vacant apprenticeship positions) and the wholesale and retail trade (43 percent) in particular have difficulties.
Even before the pandemic, both industries were worried about young talent because wages after training are rather low and working conditions are not considered very attractive.
The situation is likely to have improved somewhat since the survey took place between September 6th and 20th - in the meantime, numerous training contracts are likely to have been concluded.
Nevertheless, the development from last year continues.
In 2020, the number of newly concluded training contracts fell by 11 percent compared to the previous year, according to the Federal Institute for Vocational Training.
"Dramatic consequences possible"
"We are in a corona crisis in training that could have dramatic consequences," said IAB Director Fitzenberger - both for the potential of skilled workers in Germany and for the life satisfaction of young people. For the study, the IAB surveys 1,500 to 2,000 farms every month. 17 percent of the companies entitled to training concluded fewer or none, and only 10 percent more training contracts than before the crisis. Among the larger companies, almost half have even signed fewer training contracts than two years ago.
In the survey, almost half of the companies affected named a general lack of applications as the main reason, from which smaller companies suffer particularly badly. A lack of suitable applications is cited as the second most common cause. According to the companies, declines in company training places are less relevant.
This can also be seen from the official data from the Federal Employment Agency, which is not the same as the IAB data because not all training positions are reported to the employment agencies. While the number of registered applicants fell again by 8.3 percent compared to the same period of the previous year to 433,000 by the end of September, the number of registered in-company training positions shrank less sharply: by 3.4 percent to 496,000. According to the employment agency, 63,200 or just under 13 percent of the reported company training positions were still vacant at the end of September.
Fitzenberger called on the companies to be more willing to compromise.
“We can't really afford not to hire young people who apply,” he said.
He also advocated offering or using more internships and the entry-level qualification funded by the Federal Employment Agency.
According to many experts, a major reason for the crisis on the training market is that internships and training fairs rarely took place due to the long lockdown, so that interested school leavers had fewer opportunities to get to know the companies.
Because of the high level of uncertainty about the future development of the crisis, many young people apparently stay longer in the school system or start studying.