The number of new trainees remains at a low level.
(Photo: imago images/Georg Ulrich Dostmann)
In 2022 there were more new trainees again. But that’s not really good news. Because the increase is minimal: With 468,000 new training contracts, only 2,700 more people opted for training than in the previous year.
Better than a minus, but another slide after the end of the corona pandemic was not to be expected either. The decisive factor is that although politicians and business associations have banged on about the training, hardly anything has improved. There are even fewer new trainees in skilled trades.
Interest in an apprenticeship has thus fallen to a historically low level. In 2011, more than 560,000 young people began dual training, almost 100,000 more than now. Since then things have gone downhill.
These alarming numbers should cause an uproar in view of the looming mega skills shortage. After all, neither the energy transition nor digitization will succeed without skilled workers. And purely in terms of numbers, it needs significantly more people with vocational training than academics.
It is a fallacy that the sad numbers are the logical consequence of the decline in the birth rate, which only immigration can help to counteract. Because there is a large reservoir of young people who fall through the cracks.
Six percent of schoolchildren do not graduate – most recently around 50,000 per year. And every year more than 200,000 school leavers switch to the so-called transition area, which is intended to further prepare them for their job, instead of an apprenticeship. But far too few of them make the leap into an apprenticeship afterwards, but just sit in a waiting loop.
As a result, the number of young people who have had no professional training at all has been increasing for years, despite the shortage of skilled workers. Most recently, 2.33 million people between the ages of 20 and 34 had no professional qualifications, not including students.
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And despite tens of thousands of unfilled apprenticeships in German companies, there are regions where there are not enough apprenticeships. Ironically, this even applies to the IT professions throughout Germany.
In view of the misery, the traffic light recently decided against the will of the employers to implement the promised “training guarantee”: everyone is now entitled to an apprenticeship – in case of doubt, across companies. This must now really motivate the economy to make better use of the existing reserves. Because on-the-job training remains the silver bullet.
More: More and more young people are getting bogged down in unskilled jobs – but tens of thousands of apprenticeships remain vacant