The skilled trades in Germany are faced with a massive shortage of apprentices. Almost 40,000 training positions are currently unfilled. The need for “climate-related jobs” is particularly great.
The training situation in German skilled trades is alarming: “At the end of April there were still almost 40,000 open training places registered with our chambers of crafts,” said Jörg Dittrich, president of the trades department, of the “Rheinische Post”. He therefore appealed to young people to take advantage of these “40,000 opportunities” and start an apprenticeship. “Because of the great need for skilled craftsmen for the transformations, we need everyone in the crafts.”
Great need for heating-sanitary-air conditioning
However, the search for applicants for craft businesses is proving to be difficult. The need is particularly high in the “air conditioning professions” such as heating, sanitary and air conditioning, electrical installation, construction and in the food or health trades.
The President of the Central Association of German Crafts (ZDH) emphasized that the Skilled Immigration Act can only offer part of the solution to counteract this deficiency. “We have to concentrate much more on raising the domestic potential for skilled workers.”
Better careers guidance for students needed
Dittrich therefore calls for the compatibility of work and children to be promoted so that more women have the opportunity to work full-time. Another aspect that needs to be improved is the transition from school to training: Too many young people drop out of school without a qualification, and at grammar schools it is “still the case that the pupils primarily seek study advice and the perspectives of professional training don’t even exist,” criticized the ZDH President.
According to the microcensus, there are currently around 600,000 people between the ages of 18 and 24 who have left school but have not found a job or started training or studying. “Where have they gone? Politicians urgently need to look more closely here,” Dittrich demanded.
Comprehensive social reforms required
Dittrich also calls for fundamental social reforms along the lines of the red-green reform agenda of 2010 in order to improve the situation. “For example, I don’t understand why the younger generation should pay for the increasing life expectancy of pensioners on their own. We can no longer afford to ignore increasing life expectancy when it comes to retirement age.”
The craft president pleads for a reform of the education system and relief for companies from excessive bureaucracy. In addition, it is necessary to distribute the burden of social security more fairly. As a wage-intensive area, the skilled trades make a disproportionate contribution to the financing of the social systems.
According to the president of the trades, comprehensive measures are required to remedy the shortage of apprentices in the trades in Germany, ranging from the promotion of domestic skilled workers to the reform of social security.