The German Economic Institute (IW), which compiles the Engineer Monitor together with the VDI, assumes an annual requirement of 130,500 engineers.
(Photo: DigitalVision/Getty Images)
Berlin The shortage of engineers in Germany is dramatically worsening. In the fourth quarter of 2022 there were 170,300 vacancies for engineers – 21.6 percent more than in the same period of the previous year. This contrasted with just over 36,000 unemployed people with engineering qualifications. This emerges from the current engineering monitor of the Association of German Engineers (VDI), which was presented on Tuesday.
“The shortage of skilled workers cannot be covered today,” said Dieter Westerkamp, head of the VDI department Technology and Society. “Public construction projects come to a standstill or cannot even be started at all.” Digitization or the energy transition also threatened to be slowed down by the lack of qualified personnel. “The situation is, to put it briefly, precarious,” emphasized Westerkamp.
The German Economic Institute (IW), which compiles the Engineer Monitor together with the VDI, assumes an annual requirement of 130,500 engineers. Of these, 56,000 are due to the need for replacements because skilled workers are retiring for reasons of age and 74,500 to the additional need for future tasks such as climate change.
However, only around 70,000 university graduates with engineering qualifications enter the job market every year. There are also around 34,000 immigrants, which means that there is a mathematical gap of 26,500 skilled workers.
Westerkamp emphasized that in order to counter the shortage, all potential would have to be exploited. “That also means the best possible education for everyone.” Germany cannot afford to have millions of young people without school or vocational qualifications.
Read more about the shortage of skilled workers
Schools also need to be more active in promoting engineering professions, especially among girls. In this way, it should be made clearer what role engineers play in climate protection.
Schools also need to be more active in promoting engineering professions, especially among girls.
(Photo: dpa)
The number of first-year students in scientific and technical subjects is currently declining sharply. It fell from around 143,400 in the 2016 academic year to 125,600 in the 2022 academic year. “As a result, a significant decline in the number of graduates can be expected in the coming years,” said IW economist Axel Plünnecke.
The bottlenecks are then likely to get worse. In the fourth quarter of last year, there were arithmetically 471 vacancies for every 100 unemployed people with engineering qualifications – in the same quarter of the previous year the ratio was 387 to 100. The greatest shortage is in energy and electrical engineering, followed by construction, surveying, building technology and architectural professions and IT.
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Better career orientation in schools is not enough, said Westerkamp. You then also need qualified teachers who could, for example, teach information technology. The VDI expert called on companies to provide training and further education opportunities. And the employees would also have to use qualification offers in order to have a permanent chance on the job market.
It is clear, however, that the shortage of skilled workers cannot be remedied without strong immigration into the engineering professions. The number of employees with engineering qualifications from countries outside the EU has almost tripled since 2012, but that’s not enough, said Plünnecke.
It must be possible to get more young people from abroad interested in studying engineering in Germany; this is “a huge issue”, emphasized the IW economist. However, Germany would then have to become even better at retaining successful graduates. Around half leave the country after completing their studies and take the knowledge they have acquired with them.
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