Six-di­git num­ber of trade­speo­p­le miss­ing

The­re is a shorta­ge of 250,000 trade­speo­p­le in Ger­ma­ny. Around 20,000 trai­ning po­si­ti­ons re­main un­fil­led.

Dem Hand­werk in Deutsch­land ge­hen die Mitarbeiter*innen aus. Rund 250.000 Stel­len sind der­zeit un­be­setzt und mehr als 20.000 Aus­bil­dungs­stel­len of­fen.

The­re is a shorta­ge of 250,000 trade­speo­p­le in Ger­ma­ny. Many trai­ning po­si­ti­ons re­main un­fil­led. The shorta­ge th­rea­tens the eco­no­my and Germany’s cli­ma­te tar­gets.

Craft busi­nesses in Ger­ma­ny are loo­king for a six-fi­gu­re num­ber of em­ployees. Ac­cor­ding to the Ger­man Con­fe­de­ra­ti­on of Skil­led Crafts (ZDH), 150,000 va­can­ci­es are curr­ent­ly re­gis­tered with the em­ploy­ment agen­ci­es. As not all com­pa­nies re­port un­fil­led va­can­ci­es to the agen­ci­es, the as­so­cia­ti­on esti­ma­tes that the­re is a shorta­ge of 250,000 trade­speo­p­le.

Go­vern­ment sees cli­ma­te tar­gets at risk

Fe­de­ral Eco­no­mics Mi­nis­ter Ro­bert Ha­beck plans to at­tend the ope­ning of the trade fair on Wed­nes­day, while Fe­de­ral Chan­cell­or Olaf Scholz is ex­pec­ted to at­tend the top-le­vel talks with Ger­man in­dus­try on Fri­day.

The lack of per­son­nel is not only ham­pe­ring eco­no­mic growth, but is also jeo­par­di­zing the po­li­ti­cal goals of the Ger­man go­vern­ment, as not only trade of­fi­ci­als have been war­ning for ye­ars. One ex­am­p­le: The­re are around 43 mil­li­on ho­mes in Ger­ma­ny, and the aim is to make them com­ple­te­ly cli­ma­te-neu­tral by 2040. As a lar­ge pro­por­ti­on of the buil­ding stock is not yet en­er­gy-ef­fi­ci­ent, ex­perts esti­ma­te that around two mil­li­on ho­mes will need to be con­ver­ted every year.

„Re­no­vat­ing hou­ses in an en­er­gy-ef­fi­ci­ent way, in­stal­ling char­ging sta­ti­ons and so­lar ro­ofs, buil­ding and main­tai­ning wind tur­bi­nes and much more,“ says the ZDH. „That’s what trade­speo­p­le do; they are in­dis­pensable for all the­se fu­ture tasks.“ Ac­cor­din­gly, the trades with the grea­test shorta­ge of skil­led workers in­clude se­ve­ral con­s­truc­tion pro­fes­si­ons: ac­cor­ding to the ZDH, the­se in­clude plum­bers and hea­ting en­gi­neers, ref­ri­ge­ra­ti­on en­gi­neers, rol­ler shut­ter and sun pro­tec­tion tech­ni­ci­ans, as well as elec­tri­cal en­gi­neers, elec­tri­cal me­cha­ni­cal en­gi­neers, op­ti­ci­ans, hea­ring acou­sti­ci­ans and me­tal­wor­kers.

18,800 trai­ning places un­fil­led

A good one mil­li­on skil­led crafts busi­nesses with just un­der 5.6 mil­li­on em­ployees – around twel­ve per­cent of the to­tal work­force – are re­gis­tered in Ger­ma­ny. The skil­led trades are even more im­portant when it co­mes to vo­ca­tio­nal trai­ning. Craft­speo­p­le train around 360,000 app­ren­ti­ces, which, ac­cor­ding to the ZDH, is 29 per­cent of all trai­nees. Last year, Ger­man trade­speo­p­le con­cluded 132,129 new app­ren­ti­ce­ship con­tracts, 2,000 more than in the first year of co­ro­na­vi­rus in 2020. Ho­we­ver, around 20,800 trai­ning po­si­ti­ons re­main­ed un­fil­led.

Source: Zeit​.de