Few Ger­mans con­sider a skil­led trade

Job op­por­tu­ni­ties? Yes. In­te­rest? No. Alt­hough skil­led trades are very pre­sent in Ger­ma­ny, hard­ly an­yo­ne wants to take them up them­sel­ves. It’s very dif­fe­rent in other count­ries.

Com­pared to other count­ries, re­la­tively few peo­p­le in Ger­ma­ny are con­side­ring a care­er in the skil­led trades. In par­ti­cu­lar, the sala­ry pro­s­pects in the sec­tor are ra­ted worse in Ger­ma­ny than in other count­ries, as a stu­dy pu­blished on Mon­day by the tech­no­lo­gy group 3M and the mar­ket re­se­arch in­sti­tu­te Ip­sos shows.

Around a thousand peo­p­le from dif­fe­rent in­dus­tries were sur­vey­ed in 17 count­ries for the stu­dy – in­clu­ding Ger­ma­ny, France, the USA, the UK, Bra­zil, In­dia and Me­xi­co. The data was coll­ec­ted bet­ween Sep­tem­ber and De­cem­ber 2021.

Ac­cor­ding to the sur­vey, ten per­cent of re­spond­ents from Ger­ma­ny work in a skil­led trade them­sel­ves. A fur­ther 18 per­cent have al­re­a­dy con­side­red a care­er in the in­dus­try. Ac­cor­ding to the aut­hors of the stu­dy, this is the lo­west fi­gu­re of all the count­ries sur­vey­ed.

In con­trast, al­most th­ree quar­ters of re­spond­ents (72 per­cent) sta­ted that they were not ac­ti­ve in the skil­led trades and had never thought about it. By com­pa­ri­son, the fi­gu­re in France was 56 per­cent.

In ad­di­ti­on, only 49% of tho­se sur­vey­ed in Ger­ma­ny be­lie­ve that they could earn as much with a craft app­ren­ti­ce­ship as with a pro­fes­si­on that re­qui­res a uni­ver­si­ty de­gree. This is also the lo­west fi­gu­re among the count­ries sur­vey­ed, ac­cor­ding to the stu­dy.

Craft­sman­ship not an op­ti­on

The­re is cle­ar­ly no lack of awa­re­ness of op­por­tu­ni­ties in the skil­led trades: 87% of Ger­man re­spond­ents see many job op­por­tu­ni­ties in the sec­tor, which is slight­ly more than the glo­bal avera­ge. Ho­we­ver, 53 per­cent sta­ted that they were pur­suing other care­er in­te­rests. 20 per­cent doub­ted that they would earn en­ough mo­ney in the skil­led trades.

The skil­led crafts sec­tor in Ger­ma­ny has long com­plai­ned that many young peo­p­le are op­ting to stu­dy in­s­tead of trai­ning. It was only at the end of July that Hans Pe­ter Wolls­ei­fer, Pre­si­dent of the skil­led crafts sec­tor, cal­led for an „edu­ca­tio­nal tur­n­around“ in Ger­ma­ny in view of the shorta­ge of skil­led workers.

He esti­ma­tes that the­re is a shorta­ge of a quar­ter of a mil­li­on skil­led workers in the skil­led trades sec­tor and war­ned against „over-aca­de­miza­ti­on“. Ac­cor­ding to the in­dus­try pre­si­dent, we need to move away from the idea that only a de­gree can bring suc­cess.

Source: Spie­gel-On­line