The shortage of skilled workers runs through numerous industries.
(Photo: E+/Getty Images)
The federal government recently presented its strategy for dealing with the serious shortage of skilled workers. By 2035, a total of over seven million workers will be missing. The President of the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), Marcel Fratzscher, sees the greatest potential for closing this gap in attracting women living in Germany to the labor market.
If mothers with children under the age of six who are currently not working were to return to work at least part-time according to their preferred working hours, this would mean an increase of almost 840,000 people who would be available on the labor market, according to the forecast.
In all, almost five million women of working age are not employed at all and are not looking for a job. It is mostly mothers, daughters, daughters-in-law and wives who take care of children, husbands or relatives in need of care. Her week is filled with 40+ hours of unpaid care work.
As a result, many of these women remain far below their professional opportunities or give up working as teachers, IT specialists or nurses altogether.
Germany brought this soup on itself. The economic historian Adam Tooze attests that Germany is still stuck in an “industrial fetish” and neglects services. In the past few decades, it was often argued with the economic blind flight thesis that only industry and trade generate added value, while social services devour money.
Until 2018, Uta Meier-Gräwe held the chair for private household economics and family science at the Justus Liebig University in Giessen and was an advisor to the federal government. Her current book with Ina Praetorius “Um-Care: How care work revolutionizes the economy” is partly based on the authors’ homo-oeconomicus columns in the Handelsblatt.
(Photo: Freiburg Equal Opportunities Office)
This is one of the reasons why the professionalization of household and personal services beyond undeclared work has never been proactively pursued. Germany’s massive modernization deficit is by no means only reflected in the lack of day care and after-school places.
Because: “Housework restricts the employment participation of mothers more than childcare,” determined the DIW in 2022. The demand for everyday services around the household has been increasing for years. For many average earners, however, they are not affordable. 90 percent of those who use them do not register for these jobs.
For these reasons, too, Federal Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD) announced in January 2022 that he would introduce state-subsidized vouchers. This will initially be for families and caring relatives with an annual bonus of a maximum of 2000 euros, later for all households.
However, the vouchers are still a long time coming. But exactly such a demand-oriented stimulus for more employment, relief and added value is missing.
>> Read here: Gender Pay Gap: These are the main reasons for the inequality of salaries
“If we don’t pull out all the stops now, the shortage of skilled workers will become a permanent brake on growth,” said Heil at the presentation of the skilled labor strategy on January 20 in the Bundestag. These words must finally be followed by deeds.
More: Ways out of the misery of skilled workers – and their limits