The shortage of workers in Germany will soon worsen significantly.

The employees of the baby boomer generation – the baby boomers born between 1955 and 1970 – will reach retirement in the next 15 years.

According to official forecasts, the number of domestic workers will fall by four to six million because fewer young people will grow up.

The federal government is therefore planning a new strategy for skilled workers, which should also include the reform of immigration law for skilled workers, which is currently being intensively discussed.

Dietrich Creutzburg

Business correspondent in Berlin.

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The Federal Employment Agency (BA), which is taking part in a specialist summit planned for this Wednesday by the Federal Government in Berlin alongside representatives of the social partners and the education system, warns against narrowing the debate too much to immigration issues: it warns of an attentive, but also realistic view of the untapped potential of the domestic unemployed - and to mobilize this better with further training.

"My perception is that there is currently very polarizing talk about people looking for work in Germany - especially when it comes to the urgently needed workers and skilled workers," said BA board member Daniel Terzenbach of the FAZ or ability and, on the other hand, pretend that the job and skilled worker gap can be completely closed with jobseekers." However, neither is the case, emphasizes Terzenbach, who represented the BA at the skilled worker summit with Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD), Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) and Education Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger (FDP) will take part.

Few job offers for unskilled workers

On the one hand, people who are newly unemployed can currently find a suitable job within an average of 19 weeks, he explains.

This is a very favorable value in a long-term comparison.

On the other hand, almost 80 percent of all job offers are aimed at skilled workers - while almost two thirds of the long-term unemployed have no professional qualifications.

"Therefore, the topic of further training is rightly included in the skilled labor strategy."

In short: Those who have slipped out of the labor market for a long time often find it difficult to find their way back despite the shortage of workers - which should be easier to do in the future, for example through stronger support for catching up on professional qualifications.

However, the BA also sees similar tasks with regard to employed unskilled workers, who have an increased risk of getting into a similar situation with the upheavals in the economy.

Good conditions are necessary to make further training possible;

these would also have to be "actually wanted and started" by those involved, said Terzenbach.

However, "a self-evident further training mentality is not yet in everyone's mind".

Mechanical engineers find that education is often not practical enough

The mechanical engineering association VDMA set slightly different priorities with an appeal to the skilled workers' summit: "Politics bear particular responsibility for a functioning education system that provides the next generation of skilled workers for tomorrow," warned Managing Director Hartmut Rauen.

"There's a lot to do there, starting with practical career and study orientation through to the introduction of technology classes in all types of schools."

The previously known plans of the government to reform the immigration law classified Rauen as insufficient.

Among other things, these envisage recruiting more qualified applicants from all over the world through a new points system.

It is incomprehensible that personnel service providers from temporary work should continue to be excluded from recruiting foreign specialists.

This "core of the problem" is left out of the plans of Labor Minister Heil, criticizes Rauen.

The federal government itself expects a “skilled worker paradox” on the labor market in the coming years, as can be seen from a 40-page draft strategy for the summit.

By this she understands a shortage of skilled workers in some sectors and regions alongside job cuts in other sectors and regions.

In addition, the paper describes how the problem of staff shortages increases with the aging of society: On the one hand, the companies lack sufficient young people for the jobs that become vacant due to retirement.

On the other hand, the aging society also needs more specialists in the social and health care sector.

Business representatives are therefore openly pleading for longer working weeks and longer working hours.

Even the former SPD leader Sigmar Gabriel has already joined such considerations.