The latest warning comes from the hospitality industry: The summer season is underway, but hotels and restaurants have experienced a "stutter start", the Food, Enjoyment and Restaurants union reported on Tuesday.

The reason: Many employees lost or quit their jobs during the pandemic, and now there is a lack of staff.

Some companies therefore put in forced rest days, said union chairman Guido Zeitler.

Britta Beeger

Editor in Business.

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The hospitality industry is just one example of many that show how great the shortage of staff is in companies in Germany.

The shortage of skilled workers has turned into a labor shortage that affects almost all sectors.

There is a risk of a summer of chaos at the airports, for example because there are no employees at security checks, in baggage handling and in the cockpits.

And the construction trade union warns that the construction of new apartments and the climate-friendly renovation of existing apartments can hardly be achieved with the available resources.

But Germany also needs more wind turbines, has to renovate dilapidated bridges and lay fiber optic cables.

But no matter how great the shortage of staff in the economy is today, it is likely to get worse in the future.

Because the so-called baby boomers are now only gradually retiring.

In the case of the cohort with the highest birth rate – 1964, with almost 1.4 million people – the time has come in 2031.

And far fewer young people are moving up.

The 2011 vintage, for example, is only half the size.

So the big question is where all the much-needed labor will come from in the future.

"Radically simplify" the immigration system

"The big lever is migration," says Herbert Brücker, a researcher at the Institute for Labor Market and Vocational Research (IAB), which belongs to the Federal Employment Agency.

He made this clear at an event held by his institute on Monday evening in Nuremberg using several scenarios.

Without any migration, the labor force potential in Germany would shrink sharply by 2060, even if women and older people worked significantly more.

With net immigration of around 400,000 people per year, however, it would be possible to keep the number constant.

However, that is easier said than done.

The IAB considers a net immigration of around 100,000 people a year to be realistic in the long term - above all because far fewer people are now coming from EU countries such as Poland and Spain and immigration from third countries has by far not compensated for the decline.

This is also due to the fact that the visa procedures and the recognition of foreign professional qualifications are lengthy and bureaucratic, as companies and scientists repeatedly complain.

The federal government wants to tackle this again, said Leonie Gebers, State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs.

"We have to make all these processes much less bureaucratic and digital."