Christian Jöst has a symbolic problem, and that in the real sense: whenever industry is depicted somewhere, he has noticed that smoking chimneys are depicted as a symbol.

The abrasives entrepreneur from Wald-Michelbach in the Odenwald thinks that has nothing to do with today's industry.

"It's neither loud nor dirty here, and we use the waste heat to heat our halls."

Falk Heunemann

Business editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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Jöst is not the only one who can report that the processing industry does not always correspond to the usual expectations.

This is also documented in a survey that the Frankfurt Chamber of Industry and Commerce has just submitted.

The Frankfurt Behrend Institute prepared the study, it is intended to show how industry has changed in the region in recent years - where there have been improvements and what worries entrepreneurs.

After all, according to the head of the institute, Rainer Behrend, the manufacturing sector in the Rhine-Main region employs 366,000 men and women – he also includes Aschaffenburg and Gießen in the region.

If you include service providers such as logistics or wholesalers, then 1.2 million jobs in the region depend on industry, as Behrend calculates.

Lack of living space before lack of space

According to the survey, in which around 420 entrepreneurs from the region took part at the end of 2021, the most important issues are currently not industrial space or office rents.

The supply of sufficient and affordable space in Rhine-Main is actually of little importance to them, say two thirds of those surveyed.

They consider the offer of living space for their employees and the expansion of local public transport to be much more important.

Every second entrepreneur surveyed attaches great importance to these location factors.

And more than one in three believes that this is exactly what the region lacks.

Only one in four states that there is a lack of industrial space.

According to IHK President Ulrich Caspar, this is due to the increasing shortage of workers: the construction of apartments is the key to bringing more skilled workers to the region.

In fact, the lack of skilled workers is the biggest concern of entrepreneurs: More than 40 percent of the survey participants complain about a lack of experienced workers, 39 percent currently have too few apprentices.

Twice as many retire as school leavers

These worries are statistically justified, as Caspar explains: Currently, around twice as many men and women retire due to age in the region as school leavers - and the big retirement years are still to come.

In the Rhein-Mein area, tens of thousands of workers were then lost every year.

"And we can only compensate for this deficit by moving here." But this requires additional living space.

"Our bottleneck is where we accommodate these immigrants," says Caspar, who once founded and ran a real estate company.

Jürgen Vormann also emphasizes how necessary immigration is for the industrial location: "We are a country of immigration and always have been," says the chairman of the chamber's industry committee.

A few days ago, the federal government decided on a key issues paper to make it easier for non-European skilled workers to immigrate. EU citizens are already allowed to immigrate due to EU freedom of movement.

A points system is planned, with points for professional qualifications, work experience, language skills or personal connections to Germany.

"We don't have to reinvent the wheel," says Vormann, point systems like those in Canada could simply be adopted.

"It is important that those who are willing to perform can come."

German speaking Brazilians

IHK President Caspar hopes for more immigration from the EU, because one has to consider that immigrants could be culturally integrated.

One option is to recruit German-speaking Brazilians.

They do not have to learn German separately.

Around twelve percent of Brazilians have German ancestors, between 600,000 and 1.5 million of them are said to be able to speak German.

"It would be worth acquiring them," says the former CDU politician.

Mechanical engineering, automotive suppliers, metal and electrical industry are the largest branches of industry in the region, they together employ around 160,000 people.

The pharmaceutical, chemical and plastics industries have 94,000 employees.

The largest regional industrial location is still Frankfurt, but the city of Darmstadt is catching up fast.

Since 2013, in Darmstadt, headquarters of the pharmaceutical company Merck, the number of industrial workers has increased by 38 percent and value added by as much as 80 percent, while in Frankfurt it has fallen slightly.