Cafes, restaurants, hotels, retail, aviation: after more than two years of the corona pandemic, many companies and industries finally wanted to get going again this summer and leave the crisis mode behind.

But now they have a new problem.

One that was previously known more from care, trade or industry - there is a lack of staff.

And lots of it.

Britta Beeger

Editor in Business.

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The question is: where has all the labor gone?

With a view to the hospitality industry, the two researchers Anika Jansen and Paula Risius from the Cologne Institute for Economic Research took a closer look.

In an analysis published on Monday, they show that out of more than 788,000 employees subject to social security contributions who worked in a tourism, hotel or catering profession on average in 2020, more than 215,000 took up a new job - more than one in four.

No other profession has lost so many employees in relative terms, the authors write.

Only slightly more than 116,000 people switched to one of these professions.

Many went on sale

Based on data from the Federal Employment Agency, Jansen and Risius also investigated where the former waiters and hotel managers were staying.

At the top is sales, which includes supermarket cashiers.

Here alone, almost 35,000 people who previously worked in tourism, hotels or restaurants started new jobs.

This is followed by the area of ​​transport and logistics, which includes warehouse logisticians, parcel carriers or delivery services, as well as jobs in company management and organization, for example in secretariat.

Cleaning professions and medical health professions such as nursing the elderly and the sick also made it into the top ten.

The figures do not include people who have previously studied, been unemployed or retired - it is only about the change from one profession to another.

This shows that there are also winners from the pandemic.

For example, in the area of ​​law and administration, where authorities such as the health authorities are based, more people have started than left: the bottom line is an increase of more than 42,000 employees.

Overall - and this is remarkable - the fluctuation was even lower than before the pandemic.

The researchers attribute this, among other things, to the extensive use of short-time work.

Scientists from the Nuremberg Institute for Labor Market and Vocational Research, which belongs to the Federal Employment Agency, recently came to a similar conclusion.

According to this, from April 2020 to April 2021 fewer jobs subject to social security contributions were terminated than in the corresponding pre-crisis period.

That's even true for hospitality, which saw 28 percent fewer layoffs.

In the case of economic service providers, which also include travel agencies, the figure is 18 percent less, and in the arts and entertainment sector it is almost a third.

Scientists Christof Röttger and Enzo Weber conclude that there was no “big quit” like in the USA, i.e. a large wave of layoffs.

They therefore do not attribute the current staff shortage in the crisis industries to the fact that so many employees have left - but to the fact that so few have been hired.

In gastronomy, for example, fluctuation is always high.

But if, over a longer period of time, the number of new hires falls, employment falls, they argue.

From the point of view of the two researchers, the companies should not focus on bringing back the workers who have emigrated, but should look for new employees on a broad basis on the labor market.

They certainly see chances that this will work, because the hospitality industry does not have any particularly specific requirements – but they also say that it will “take some time” for the situation to normalize.

Because the labor market simply cannot follow as quickly as the ups and downs in the Corona crisis.