Berlin War in the Ukraine, problems in the supply chain, rising inflation – none of this has affected the German labor market so far. The employment records, which were only briefly interrupted by the corona pandemic, are heading for a continuation. The head of the Federal Employment Agency (BA), Detlef Scheele, said on Tuesday at the presentation of the current labor market data that a “de facto decoupling between economic development and the number of unemployed” has been observed for a long time.
It is also currently showing. Last week, the federal government lowered its growth forecast for the current year from 3.6 percent to 2.2 percent GDP growth. And yet companies are hiring new employees. The Federal Statistical Office counted around 45.2 million people in employment in March. For the first time, the level of February 2020 – i.e. before the start of the corona restrictions in Germany – was exceeded again.
Also the number of newly registered vacancies in April are already moving back above the pre-crisis level, said Scheele. “The demand for new workers is still very high.”
The Federal Agency’s BA-X job index, an indicator of labor demand, continued its upward trend in April, reaching its highest level since the survey began in 2005. At that time, however, with almost five million unemployed there was still a reservoir from which companies could draw.
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In April of this year, a good 2.3 million people were still registered as unemployed – 462,000 fewer than a year ago. The unemployment rate fell by 0.1 percentage points to 5.0 percent. In Bavaria, the rate has fallen below three percent for the first time this year, putting the state close to full employment.
>> Read here: Ukraine shock has little impact on willingness to hire – skilled trades and IG Metall warn of a shortage of skilled workers
It is correspondingly difficult for many companies to find employees. The general manager of the mechanical engineering association VDMA, Thilo Brodtmann, is alarmed. “The shortage of skilled workers threatens to slow down urgently needed growth,” he told Handelsblatt.
Hospitality urgently needs employees
The demand for staff in the hospitality industry, which is currently recovering from the corona lockdown, has risen particularly sharply. Corporate service providers or industrial companies are also looking for new employees, even if the manufacturing sector has not yet reached the employment high of 2019.
The extent to which refugees from Ukraine can help to meet labor needs is still unclear at the moment, said BA boss Scheele. It is not known whether and how long they wanted to stay here. In addition, of the approximately 580,000 registered refugees, around 40 percent are children and ten percent are people over the working age.
There is therefore growing pressure from business on the government to facilitate immigration to Germany, completely independently of the flow of refugees from Ukraine, and to quickly tackle the reform of the Skilled Immigration Act promised in the coalition agreement.
Foreign specialists could help alleviate the shortage of staff, said VDMA General Manager Brodtmann. “The prerequisite for this is unbureaucratic and transparent legal regulations – both for companies here and for job-seeking specialists abroad.”
Many companies had to lay off staff during the lockdowns.
(Photo: dpa)
The points system for immigration promised by the traffic light is just as important as the smoothest possible recognition of foreign professional qualifications. Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser (SPD) recently announced in an interview with the Handelsblatt that the traffic light government would “create a modern immigration law in order to attract workers that we urgently need”.
>> Read here: Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser: “We will create modern immigration law”
However, companies are not only looking outwards, but also on domestic potential – for example in the care sector, where the shortage of skilled workers is particularly dramatic. The Barmer health insurance company recently calculated that the industry would be short of around 182,000 additional workers by 2030. The Bertelsmann Foundation even assumes that there will be a shortage of up to 500,000 nursing staff.
The reasons for the shortage are manifold. Essentially, however, an increasing need for personnel due to more and more people in need of care meets partly unattractive working conditions. The problems have been known for years, but the situation has not really improved. A commission of experts for hospital reform presented by Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) on Monday should change this, at least in the clinics.
Nursing industry could leverage large domestic workforce potential
The potential is definitely there, as a study sponsored by the trade union-affiliated Hans Böckler Foundation suggests. According to this, at least 300,000 full-time carers would be available if it were possible to motivate dropouts to return to work and part-time workers to increase their working hours. However, a prerequisite would be a significant improvement in working conditions.
For the study, in which the Bremen Chamber of Labor, the Saarland Chamber of Labor and the Institute for Work and Technology (IAT) were also involved, around 12,700 nursing staff who had left and were employed part-time were surveyed. The respondents named better pay, reliable working hours and more time for human attention as key conditions for returning to work or increasing working hours.
In an optimistic scenario, up to 660,000 additional full-time carers would then be available. IAT research director Michaela Evans said Tuesday the study raises some important issues for the federal government’s expert commission, of which she is a member.
The health policy spokeswoman for the SPD parliamentary group, Heike Baehrens, now also sees employers as having a responsibility: “Through a good and appreciative management and instruction culture in the facilities, you can pave the way back into care for the many well-trained specialists in our country “, she said. “The vicious circle of not enough staff and the remaining staff being overburdened, which then reduces working hours or even leaves the profession, can be broken here.”
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