Handelsblatt author Thomas Hanke analyzes interesting data and trends from all over the world in the column.
(Photo: Klawe Rzeczy)
A cynic might think that the monetary policy aimed at combating inflation is showing its first signs of success: the number of vacancies is falling in the large industrialized countries from the USA to Germany. By the summer it had risen to levels well above those reached before the Covid pandemic. Not only the nursing and healing professions, restaurants and hotels are urgently looking for workers, but also the industrial core of our economies.
In September, the number of jobs offered went down again for the first time. That’s exactly what central banks want: to lower the demand for labor so inflation isn’t fueled by higher wages.
Unfortunately, business and mature economies as a whole need exactly the opposite: not less demand for labor, but more labor supply. This could reduce the existing tensions in the labor market. This is the only way to create more prosperity.
Last Thursday, Minister of Labor Hubertus Heil described securing a sufficient number of skilled workers as a “question of fate for our country, for our prosperity and thus also for social cohesion”.
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By increasing wages, companies could help offer their skills to people who, for whatever reason, have withdrawn from the labor market or have never worked. But that is exactly what is not possible because the central banks are struggling – which brings us back to the starting point.
This is the dilemma faced by the industrialized world: short-term anti-inflationary policies are at odds with the structural goal of preventing the labor force from shrinking in aging societies. Only in France is the number of active people still increasing, because of the previous good population growth.
Increasing the level of employment – but how?
If the path to higher wages is blocked, what remains to increase employment? One way: increase the labor market participation of women. But this requires better childcare, and this is where there is a particularly large lack of skilled workers.
Another: The education system should produce fewer school dropouts. In an OECD comparison, Germany does not fare particularly well here. The approach is laborious but promising: Better education creates higher incomes and improves productivity.
Another way is more immigration. Minister Heil wants to walk it. We currently have a larger influx of migrants than many municipalities would like. Their emergency calls about financial and housing overload dominate the political debate.
The opportunities remain underexposed. The USA owes its superior growth over the past few decades primarily to the fact that immigration was higher than in Europe.
Many Ukrainians will remain in Germany in the long term. It takes a lot of micromanagement to make it a success for them and the country. That’s where it often goes wrong. One district in Berlin can get Ukrainian children into a school in just a few days, another can’t do it even after weeks. The enormous private willingness to help is not intertwined with state activities.
>> Read here: What helps against the shortage of skilled workers: work 42 hours a week or only 25?
It is similar with another approach, the longer working life. Working beyond the rigid age limit can immediately mobilize valuable specialists. You can’t order that, but you can make it possible through targeted offers.
One thing seems certain – in the concert of industrialized countries, some will be in a better position than others after this crisis: those who do not fatalistically accept the effects of the restrictive monetary policy, but instead work with all relevant actors to increase the supply of labor.
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