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Job seekers in the Treptow-Köpenick job center

Photo: Jens Kalaene / picture alliance / dpa

It rarely happens that a single press release exposes the German state, the federal government and their largest downstream authority at the same time.

This happened last week.

The Federal Employment Agency had taken to the pen, and the Federal Labor Minister quickly became, according to his own statements, “insanely angry”.

About me, though.

“The second stage of the new ‘Skilled Workers Immigration Act’ will come into force on March 1st,” said the press release from the Federal Employment Agency (BA) in Nuremberg.

»This enables employers to hire foreign workers at short notice during peak times.

(…) No vocational training or studies are required.«

That's actually pretty funny: Anyone who manages to accommodate the opposite, unskilled workers without training, in a law on skilled worker immigration cannot be completely without humor.

But seriously: For decades it has been explained to the country that only skilled workers are brought in from abroad in a controlled manner, while unskilled workers are only brought in for the harvest.

Asylum seekers, whether with or without educational qualifications, are a different group.

It has been explained to the country for just as long that unemployed people without a vocational qualification should be given further training for several billion euros a year so that they no longer do simple work, but do something better.

However, so-called "unskilled" work is still needed; there are hundreds of thousands of vacancies of this kind, and companies are complaining for a reason.

In order to continue to ignore this, you have to be a social democratic labor market politician.

A portion of contempt for simple, physical work and those who do it is also part of it.

But further: “This can help in peak times when it is not possible to develop sufficient domestic potential,” says a senior BA official in the press release.

Well, the “domestic potential” probably means the 2.8 million unemployed that the BA reported for the month of January.

A good 1.5 million of them also have no vocational training.

This is disturbing: In purely mathematical terms, there are 60 unskilled unemployed people for just one of the 25,000 unskilled worker positions, initially for a limited period of eight months.

Mentioned by name are the catering industry, the hotel industry and airports, where there is of course a staff shortage all year round.

Other industries could easily be added.

And there is no one to be found?

“Work in the catering industry, for example, is not always possible for domestic single parents with children because of the working hours in the evenings or weekends,” the text says, as if by way of explanation.

And yes, difficult life situations should of course be taken into account, I mean that without irony.

But to be on the safe side: Anyone who is in further training, who is studying, who is chronically ill or who cannot support themselves because of small children at home - and that is more than two million people - does not appear in the unemployment statistics.

He or she is not included in the 1.5 million or so, the majority of whom have been out of work for more than a year.

These are no longer mistakes, it's a system.

A landlord recently appeared on RTL and n-tv and said: He had never had anyone sent to him by the employment office.

In fact, the BA's officially reported "placement rate" has been falling for years, but the lobby milieus are taking it in their stride.

You have other goals.

And they have citizen's money.  

Ms. Fahimi, the DGB chairwoman, put it this way last week: "The most important part of the citizen's benefit reform is that the priority provision for job placement has been eliminated," she said on a podium at the Friedrich Ebert Foundation.

Labor Minister Heil from the SPD sat next to her.

He nodded: Now further training has priority, and foreigners should do the simple jobs that are left behind.

However, to be precise, not necessarily those foreigners (without a German passport) who make up almost half of all citizens' benefit recipients registered as unemployed.

If one wanted to put it cynically, then it would be like this: In an officially administered two-class society, certain simple activities in return for a standard salary are intended for foreigners, but not for domestic foreigners.

Labor Minister Heil struggled on the podium with his, as mentioned at the beginning, “crazy” anger over a tweet that dealt with the 25,000 unskilled workers.

»Yesterday I was really annoyed by a, I would say, liberal-conservative journalist who spoke at X about a regulation that would also come into force on March 1st.

comes into force,” said Heil.

"It's a capitulation that we no longer want to put people who receive citizens' benefit into work, what nonsense."

Regarding the minister's words, I can competently say that "liberal-conservative" applies, because the tweet was from me.

However, I doubt that it is not a “surrender” on his part.

Of course, everyone involved would rather have more citizens' benefit recipients working than fewer, I believe that straight away.

The minister has recently been trying an approach that he calls “job turbo”.

Alone: ​​According to everything we know, there have been no major successes so far - similar to the summer of 2022, when the minister wanted to quickly bring 2,000 suitcase transporters from Turkey to understaffed German airports.

In the end there were only a few hundred, and even then he promised in an interview that he would also encourage employment agencies to place domestic unemployed people.

Swam over it?

I fear that this work attitude is currently paralyzing Germany as much as steep electricity prices or bureaucracy.

Just last week, Economics Minister Habeck complained that the very high level of sickness in 2023 had also slowed down the economy.

The growth is therefore said to have been half a percent smaller than possible.

How much do the hundreds of thousands of vacant positions - including those for unskilled people - cost, for which there is no one left?

What could be manufactured, delivered, approved and enjoyed if more domestic unemployed people worked?

Don't they want to or shouldn't they?