Berlin The expectations of the construction industry are huge: the federal government wants to have 400,000 new apartments built every year – also to curb the rise in rents. Added to this are the climate targets, which will hardly be achievable without energy-related refurbishment of the building stock. Axel Gedaschko, President of the Central Association of the Housing Industry (GdW), is concerned. “The generation of baby boomers is retiring, but this gap has to be filled first,” he says. “Dreaming of building new, additional capacities is therefore unrealistic from today’s perspective.”
There is already an acute shortage of skilled workers in the construction and finishing industry. In the field of plumbing, heating and air conditioning alone, only 18 percent of the vacancies are currently being filled, says Michael Voigtländer, real estate economist at the German Economic Institute (IW). The relevant professional associations recently warned in a joint appeal with IG Metall that 190,000 electricians, sanitary technicians, metalworkers and carpenters are already missing.
However, the war in Ukraine, supply bottlenecks and strong price increases are also affecting the industry at the moment. The construction companies that the Munich Ifo Institute regularly surveys for the employment barometer have therefore recently been rather reluctant to hire new people.
Ifo expert Klaus Wohlrabe reports on a large number of cancellations in the construction industry. Together with the delivery bottlenecks in building materials, this is making companies more cautious when it comes to personnel planning. “Paradoxically, however, there is still a large shortage of skilled workers,” says Wohlrabe. Around 38 percent of the companies surveyed complained about such problems.
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GdW boss Gedaschko is also familiar with the dilemma. There are trades in which a great many specialists are already missing – for example in technical building equipment, heat pumps and photovoltaics. “On the other hand, the cancellation of new construction and modernization projects due to the very poor construction conditions is increasingly leading to short-time work.”
The Hessian building contractor Thomas Reimann fears that this measure could soon no longer be sufficient. Reimann sees difficult months or even years ahead of the construction. “For 14 days I’ve been receiving applications from highly qualified skilled workers whose previous companies are reducing capacities or closing completely,” reports the head of Alea Hoch- und Industriebau AG.
Industry demands less bureaucracy
So far, mainly project developers and construction companies have been affected. However, Reimann fears that the finishing trades could also slide into a crisis. Window builders, electrical engineers or installers are still hard to come by at the moment. “But within the next 12 months, there’s a good chance many of them will be calling for work too. It can be a very difficult winter.”
Reimann, who has switched from the new construction business to revitalization, renovation and building in existing stock, calls for the urgent removal of bureaucratic hurdles: short distances, quick approvals and significantly fewer regulations. “Politicians must finally tackle this, otherwise we won’t have to talk about sufficient living space in the next few years.”
Politicians are currently assuming a long-term personnel problem rather than excess. At the day of the construction industry, the State Secretary in the Ministry of Labor, Leonie Gebers (SPD), recently warned that the shortage of skilled workers should not become a “permanent construction site” for the industry. She called on companies to offer internships, advertise construction jobs in schools and social media, and forge alliances with chambers or employment agencies.
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GdW President Gedaschko emphasizes that in addition to trying to recruit workers from abroad, efforts must also be made to get by with fewer staff – through automation, robotics or the larger-scale use of industrially manufactured components.
IW economist Voigtländer also calls for the building regulations to be reviewed and simplified as quickly as possible in order to create potential for cheaper and serial construction: “This would then also allow building with fewer staff.”
There is already a shortage of up to 190,000 electricians, plumbing technicians, metalworkers and carpenters in the fit-out trades.
(Photo: imago/photothek)
As far as the recruitment of skilled workers from abroad is concerned, the Western Balkans regulation in particular has paid off for the construction industry. This came into force at the peak of refugee migration to Germany and originally served the purpose of relieving the asylum procedure.
Since then, citizens from Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, the Republic of North Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia have had access to the German labor market if they can show a concrete job offer. An evaluation of the regulation carried out by the Institute for Labor Market and Occupational Research (IAB) on behalf of the Ministry of Labor shows that at 44 percent the majority of the workers who entered the country worked for the construction industry.
Due to the high demand, the government had already extended the regulation, which was originally limited to the end of 2020, by three years. The Ministry of Labor announced that it would make the instrument indefinite in this parliamentary term.
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State Secretary Gebers promised at the Day of the Construction Industry that the coalition would also work to facilitate immigration. Thanks to the Skilled Immigration Act, which has been in force since March 2020, skilled workers without a university degree could work in all professions in Germany for the first time. “This is an important relief for the construction industry and its companies,” said Gebers. But she sees “that we have to make improvements here”. Recognition procedures should also be possible in Germany.
The state secretary sees good working conditions as the “best advertisement for a job in the construction industry” – i.e. occupational safety and health and appropriate remuneration. In fact, jobs are changed more frequently in the construction industry than in the overall economy as a whole. In structural and civil engineering, for example, the annual fluctuation rate is almost 50 percent. The causes: health reasons or a salary that is perceived as too low. The construction employers and the trade union IG Bau recently had a long wage conflict about the industry minimum wage, which could only be ended in arbitration.
More: How Europe is fighting the shortage of skilled workers – and what Germany can learn from it