Status: 07/14/2021 3:24 p.m.
After the economic slump in the Corona crisis, the German economy is picking up speed again. Now there is no longer a lack of orders – but there is a lack of personnel and raw materials.
It sounds like a different time: Short-time work and the first layoff were the worry issues among the employees at Thomas Emler’s therapy center in Wetzlar, Hesse, at the end of the year. Because in the first and second corona wave, only every fifth patient came to the occupational and physiotherapists. Corona is now taking care of more patients – especially among children. “At the turn of the year I didn’t know how to keep my people busy,” recalls Emler, the founder of the practice. “Now I don’t know how we can do all of the jobs. We have waiting lists for the first time.”
Glasbau Hahn has had the same experience. The traditional Frankfurt company builds showcases for museums all over the world with 100 employees. When there were no orders during the corona crisis, co-owner Isabel Hahn put the brakes on costs. “In December we had to part with a handful of employees,” she recalls. “Now we are looking for staff again and hope to be able to employ at least some of those who were terminated at the time.”
Dismissals are followed by a shortage of skilled workers
As different as the two companies and their industries are, they are exemplary for the German economy. The job market has been on a roller coaster ride. The ifo employment barometer crashed at the beginning of last year and only slowly recovered. Since May it has been showing that more companies want to hire new employees instead of reducing them. “The short-time working instrument prevented the worst,” explains economist Timo Wollmershäuser from the Munich Ifo Institute, “but the shortage of skilled workers is back and will continue to intensify.”
Another corona effect from lockdown and border closings increases the staff shortage: In the twelve months before Corona – i.e. from February 2019 to February 2020 – 255,000 workers from abroad were added. In the following twelve months it was only 23,000 – less than a tenth.
Material and raw material shortages and excessive prices
A lack of staff is one of the obstacles. The lack of preliminary products and raw materials is another. “Either we get nothing. Or at completely overpriced prices,” complains entrepreneur Hahn. In the past few decades, only a small minority in Ifo company surveys indicated that a shortage of raw materials was an obstacle to production. Now, at 45 percent, almost half say that.
One of them is Andreas Widl, CEO of Samson. Sufficient orders for industrial valves have now been received again. 4500 employees worldwide could work under full load again. “Only one component does not have to be available, then the valve cannot be installed,” says Widl. It brings tears to the eyes of every entrepreneur when a shortage of raw materials slows down production. Because normally the following applies: If there are more orders, production increases shortly afterwards – and vice versa. If incoming orders fall, as in the financial crisis of 2008, production also collapses. Just like at the beginning of the pandemic. But now: The companies have many more orders than they can process.
Society as a whole feels the consequences
According to Wollmershäuser, this has very tangible consequences for all of us: “German industry cannot hire as many employees as it would actually do if it were to process all of the orders. And of course that means for our prosperity: There is a loss of income, that we wouldn’t have if production could ramp up. ”
How long the shortage will exist and whether the trend will even intensify, nobody can reliably predict. Only one thing is clear: whether there is a shortage of raw materials or skilled workers – both are slowing the upswing at the hoped-for end of the corona pandemic.