The Federal Ministry of Labor caused astonishment with an assessment of the shortage of skilled workers. It does not recognize a “comprehensive shortage of skilled workers”, it says in an answer to a small request from the left-wing faction in the Bundestag, which is available to the Tagesspiegel. Experts and politicians disagree. So far, the shortage of skilled workers has been considered one of the greatest threats to Germany as a business location.
According to the Federal Ministry of Labor, around 1.82 million vacancies had to be filled in the third quarter of 2022, and around 2.45 million people were registered as unemployed. If one takes into account those who were “in labor market policy measures, temporarily unable to work and in the foreseeable end of gainful employment”, around 4.35 million people were looking for work in October.
government apparently disagreed
FDP parliamentary group leader Christian Dürr is critical of the Federal Ministry’s interpretation. “Just because there are more unemployed than vacancies doesn’t mean we don’t have a problem,” he told the Tagesspiegel. “You can’t weigh these numbers against each other, because different skills are required in every industry. I talk to many companies and associations, the answer is always the same: there are not enough workers.”
Sabine Köhne-Finster from the competence center for securing skilled workers at the German Economic Institute made a similar statement. “We currently have 530,000 jobs nationwide for which there are no suitably qualified applicants. That is over a third of all vacancies. We would be talking about a clear shortage of skilled workers,” she said. The bottlenecks are not equally serious in every industry and not in every region. But you have to keep in mind that not everyone can move just like that.
The Ministry of Economics refers to the latest statements by Minister Robert Habeck (Greens), who apparently does not share the assessment of the Ministry of Labor either. “We not only have an increasing shortage of skilled workers. There is a general lack of workers in many sectors,” he said. This is an acute obstacle to economic development.
SPD politician defends ministry
The Federal Ministry of Labor itself also sees a “significant shortage” of skilled workers in “an increasing number of occupational fields and in some regions”. For the year 2021, the Federal Employment Agency had identified bottlenecks in 148 of the 1,200 occupational categories considered. In all probability, these bottlenecks would intensify further in the future due to demographic change. In addition, there is structural change, digitization and the decarbonization of the economy.
The ministry refers to the so-called “skilled worker paradox”, which describes the “increasing simultaneity of skilled worker shortages and job cuts”. One option to alleviate the shortage of skilled workers is the immigration of skilled workers from third countries, i.e. from countries that do not belong to the EU.
The labor market policy spokesman for the SPD parliamentary group, Martin Rosemann, sees no contradiction in the statements made by the ministry. The ministry takes the current labor market situation “very seriously”, even “if the definitional requirements are not met to speak of a “comprehensive shortage of skilled workers” or a “general shortage of workers” at this point in time,” he told the Tagesspiegel.
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Source: Tagesspiegel
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