Study: Shortage of skilled workers threatens important government reform plans

2023-05-26T08:20:10.842Z

Highlights: The goal of building 400,000 new homes in Germany is not realistic, according to experts. The goal is to increase the number of people working in the construction industry. The aim is to reduce the need for part-time workers, which is already a problem, the experts say. The new homes are expected to be completed by the end of the year, but they are not likely to be finished in time for the new homes to be built. The construction of the new housing estates is expected to cost an estimated $1.5 billion.

Energy transition, farewell to the combustion car, housing construction: the German government has set itself ambitious goals. Reaching them could be difficult – if only because of the lack of manpower.

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Refinery near Cologne: "The traffic light government should reassess its goals."

Photo: C. Hardt / Future Image / IMAGO

According to a study, central projects of the federal government are endangered by the considerable shortage of skilled workers in many areas. "We see clear risks in all areas that the achievement of goals is endangered by personnel bottlenecks," write the researchers from the Prognos Institute in a recent study, which is available to the newspapers of the Funke Media Group. Accordingly, it is questionable whether the energy transition, the mobility transition, housing construction and the improvement of childcare can be realized as planned.

"The traffic light government should reassess its goals. It is right to set ambitious goals. But they must also be feasible," said the head of the study, Oliver Ehrentraut, the Funke newspapers.

According to the information, the analysis was particularly sobering for residential construction. The German government wants to build 400,000 apartments per year, but is already clearly missing the target – not least because of the already existing shortage of skilled workers.

Around 930,000 people are currently employed in the construction industry. The researchers expect the labor supply to continue to shrink until the end of the decade. "The goal of achieving a significant increase in housing construction is therefore hardly achievable."

According to the experts, the situation is similarly critical when it comes to renewable energies, which the traffic light coalition wants to massively expand in the coming years. However, there is also a shortage of staff in childcare, in the railways or in the automotive industry.

The researchers consider the strategy propagated by politicians to encourage part-time employees to work longer hours and to increase women's participation in the labour market to be moderately promising. Today, relatively few women and part-time jobbers worked in the industrial and construction occupations under consideration. In addition, career choices and working time decisions cannot be prescribed, they are, among other things, the result of role models that have been shaped over many years.

mik/AFP

Study: Shortage of skilled workers threatens important government reform plans

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