The German economy lacks skilled workers and workers in general.

This shortage is already hindering every second company, the KfW development bank recently reported and warned that Germany is heading for an era of declining prosperity if nothing changes in this situation.

While immigration is seen as a key to alleviating the problem, data released on Friday highlights the fact that millions of Germans fundamentally want to work but are unavailable for various reasons - and that number is growing.

In 2021, 3.1 million people belonged to the so-called hidden reserve, according to the Federal Statistical Office in Wiesbaden.

Although the number is not exactly comparable due to methodological changes in the statistics,

Johannes Pennekamp

Responsible editor for business reporting.

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According to the Federal Office, one explanation for part of the increase is the corona pandemic.

People who lost or quit their jobs during the crisis may not have immediately started looking for a new job.

State transfer payments and many other hard and softer factors can play a role in this.

The people in the hidden reserve should not be confused with the approximately 2.5 million unemployed in Germany who are actively looking for a job but have not yet found a job.

The hidden reserve, on the other hand, includes people without work who are not available for the labor market in the short term or who are not currently actively looking for work, but still want work.

A lack of qualifications is not the main reason

Who is one of these people that the German job market could really use right now?

The experts differentiate between three groups: First, people who look after children or parents and are therefore unable to take a job in the short term.

Secondly, people who would like to work, but are not looking for a current one because they believe, for example, that they cannot find a suitable job.

And thirdly, a group of people who are very far from the labor market and who are neither looking for a job nor available at short notice, but who nevertheless express a general desire for work.

This third group made up the largest part in 2021 with 1.8 million people.

Women were disproportionately unavailable for the labor market (56 percent).

More than a third of them said they were unable to work because they had caring responsibilities.

Simon Jäger, who heads the Research Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn, therefore told the FAZ about possible solutions: "One decisive factor is the expansion of childcare offers".

Secondly, the researcher believes that more flexible working time regulations are possible. Thirdly, according to Jäger, "cultural factors, i.e. social expectations of mothers", stand in the way of greater participation in the labor force.

An evaluation by the Institute for Labor Market and Occupational Research (IAB) showed in 2021 that among people who have come to Germany as refugees since 2013, labor market participation still needs to be increased.

Language skills and training and further education are necessary for this.

"This also applies in particular to refugee women, whose qualifications are often difficult or impossible to transfer to the regulated German labor market," says the analysis.

What is striking about the new figures is that 60 percent of the people in the hidden reserve had vocational training or a university or technical college entrance qualification.

A lack of qualifications is therefore not the main reason for non-employment.