Vanessa Baron felt little support from her school when it came to writing applications. During the corona pandemic there was no time for that. She sent off five applications, received one rejection, and four were not answered at all. So last fall, the 16-year-old had a degree but no apprenticeship. Instead of becoming tomorrow’s skilled worker, she became today’s unemployed.
Clara Nitsche describes the shortage of skilled workers as “one of the greatest challenges of our time”. Together with her party friend Julia Post, the deputy chairwoman of the Green/Pink List city council group presented a package of applications on Tuesday that is intended to improve the future prospects of young people. For example, mentoring programs are to be used more frequently at municipal schools: volunteers are to support young people in their search for an apprenticeship. This is a particularly effective approach and, thanks to the use of volunteers, is also inexpensive, emphasized Post.
One of these mentoring programs is the non-profit initiative “Joblinge”. Since 2009 she has also been represented in Munich. In a six-month program, young people between the ages of 15 and 27 who find it difficult to start in the labor market are supported in finding an apprenticeship. A total of 1,600 young people have already been accepted into the program and the placement rate is 72 percent. However, because the funding from the European Social Fund in Bavaria has now ceased, the future of the program is in question. The Greens/Pink List want to step in at least until the end of the year with a state bridging aid of 200,000 euros – in the hope that the European Social Fund in Bavaria will launch a new program by then.
Vanessa Baron has been in the Joblinge program since January. At a company presentation, she became aware of the profession of hearing care professional. After an internship, she is now certain that this is exactly her dream job. “I didn’t even know the job existed before,” she says.
Many training positions remain vacant – because young people lose their bearings
According to Katrin Schwinghammer, Managing Director of Joblinge, this is exactly where the problem lies: the training market has become so big that young people are often simply disoriented. As a result, many training positions remain vacant – in September last year, according to figures from the Federal Employment Agency, there were around 2,500 in Munich alone. “We have a demand problem, not a supply problem,” emphasizes Nitsche.
This is where the third motion by the Greens/Pink List parliamentary group comes in: a campaign is intended to make apprenticeships more attractive, for example through decentralized apprenticeship fairs where smaller companies are also represented. So that next fall’s graduates don’t look the same as Vanessa Baron did last year.