If you wanted to have a drink in a bar these days, you probably have stood in front of closed doors. And if you need a repair at home at short notice, you have to be patient. On average, the waiting time before an order can be started is almost nine weeks. Both sectors are facing major problems.
There are currently 46,000 vacancies in the German hotel and catering industry, and up to 100,000 positions are probably actually vacant. Around 150,000 vacancies are currently reported to the employment agencies in craft businesses, and here too the number of unreported cases is likely to be higher. Feedback from the chambers of crafts, guilds and associations shows that around 250,000 more craftsmen and women could be employed. 18,000 training places alone remain vacant each year.
Torsten Schulz is a master electrician with his own business in Elze, a small town in the south of Lower Saxony. “We have significantly more orders than we can process,” he says in an interview with the Tagesspiegel. The waiting times are enormous. He only accepts orders from existing customers. “We don’t have the capacity for anything else.” Training in trades is no longer popular, he says. “The good secondary school student who wants to do an apprenticeship as an electrician no longer exists. Almost everyone graduates from high school and then aims for either a degree or at least commercial training, something in the office.” Schulz now only has one employee, he needs at least two more to manage the workload to some extent. “I’m 58 now and I’m finding that the job is getting more and more tiring. I would very much like to work less, but at the moment I can’t.” He had hoped that one of his daughters would take over the business. She is currently studying business administration, her father’s company does not appeal to her. “I’m not under any illusions anymore, I’ll just close down at some point. It’s a shame, I founded the company in 1992 and it’s doing well.”
Schulz also blames increased requirements for the situation: “They are now enormous. We mainly do fire, security and video technology. It’s no longer the classic laying of lines, it’s about computing and programming, smart home, intelligent building control.” Today’s electrician has to be a small network technician. He has had to lay off three trainees in recent years. “You didn’t pack school.”
Philip Krone, head of a crafts company in Berlin with a focus on building technology, reports similar experiences. The technology has become more complicated, many things are merging. “A good plant mechanic has to know the rule of three and have good grades in math and physics. But we can no longer choose.” Krone has 170 employees: he could easily use ten to fifteen more, he tells the Tagesspiegel. “The order books are full, but it’s not fun at the moment: the shortage of skilled workers, wage pressure due to inflation, supply chain bottlenecks caused by the crisis, we have some construction sites.”
Finding offspring still works to some extent. “It’s definitely easier for us than very small companies without an online presence, we are very active on social media and invest a lot of resources in recruiting. Gesellen describes Krone as “hot goods” that are difficult to find. “So employee retention measures are all the more important so that we don’t lose our good people to other companies for a few euros.” we are climate protectors, we implement the climate change: optimize CO2, exchange gas systems for heat pumps, generate our own energy, nothing works without us. It’s a shame that this is so little discussed in public.” In addition, the industry is absolutely future-proof. “With us, nobody has to worry about their job.”
The industry is doing a lot to attract young people to the trades, says Andreas Koch-Martin, Managing Director of the Guild of Sanitary, Heating and Air Conditioning Technology in Berlin: Career orientation at schools, workshop days at schools, participation in job fairs, support with applications, projects with Refugee post-qualification measures, math tutoring, vocational high school (journeyman’s examination and high school diploma within 4 years). He hopes that a mix of active image improvement and creating incentives will be successful. “At the same time, young people from all areas of society, school systems and phases of life must be addressed.”
If you look at the demographic development, it becomes clear that the shortage of skilled workers will not decrease in the coming years. The Institute for Labor Market and Vocational Research of the Federal Employment Agency has calculated that 400,000 foreign workers will be needed every year so that there will continue to be as many workers on the German labor market as there are now.
But good advice is not only expensive when it comes to skilled workers: for twelve years Angelika Behr successfully ran the “Café Hipgold” in Hamburg’s Winterhude district. At the beginning of the year she closed, although the customers ran into her booth. The reason: lack of staff. The past year in the café robbed her of her last strength, says Behr. “I’m 60 now, I couldn’t and didn’t want to stand in the shop seven days a week anymore.” One of her full-time employees was no longer allowed to expose herself to stress after a stroke, another had to quit the job because of arthrosis acknowledge hands. “The first closing time from mid-March to mid-May broke our neck,” says Behr. “After that, I didn’t get any more full-time employees, nor did temporary workers. I used to have a lot of applications on the table and didn’t have to worry about them. Those times are long gone. I advertised on Facebook and Insta, on the net. But there was hardly any response.” The job interviews were often similar.
“For example, there was a chef who wanted two free weekends a month and actually at least two during the week, every week. So I would have needed someone else.” When a lengthy construction site and a no-parking zone were announced in front of the shop, she made the decision to give up the café. Would she have given up the hip gold if it hadn’t been for the staffing issue? “No never. It would never have occurred to me that the “hip gold” was my baby.” A new café has now opened here – it’s closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. The reason: lack of staff.
Where have all the people gone? That is only part of the question, says Paula Risius from the Competence Center for Securing Skilled Workers (KOFA) at the German Economic Institute (IW). In some sectors, for example, demand has increased enormously. “This applies, for example, to the construction trades. While 129,000 people were employed as helpers in structural and civil engineering in Germany in 2013, in 2021 there will be 225,000. During this period, 17,000 employees subject to social security contributions were also added to qualified structural and civil engineering occupations. This is exactly how the question arises: where do they all come from?”
The situation is different in gastronomy: almost 216,000 people left the tourism, hotel and restaurant profession in 2020. This is the result of the short report “Sorgenkind Gastro” by the DIW. They mainly switched to the areas of sales, transport and logistics and corporate management and organization.
The German Hotel and Restaurant Association believes that the gap can no longer be closed with workers from Germany. “It would be helpful to increase the so-called Western Balkans regulation for facilitating the immigration of people to take up work in Germany above the currently specified 25,000 people.” In addition, every effort must be made to ensure that refugees from Ukraine who want to work can be processed as quickly as possible received from the immigration authorities.”
Ricardo Fischer runs an organic bakery in Leipzig. He remembers times when ten to fifteen people applied to him for a job. Today it’s the other way around: “Many companies are vying for an applicant.” In the past, Fischer occasionally had to close his shop temporarily or was only able to open it half-days because he didn’t have the staff. “I can’t let people work a double shift here.” In order to keep his employees, Fischer is breaking new ground: For example, bread is now baked every day.
The willingness to change has increased, he says. “It’s easy to apply online anywhere, sometimes even without a CV. For me, being a baker is my absolute dream job, but it is physically demanding and many people no longer want that. I feel like money matters more than it used to. And work-life balance.” For this reason, Ricardo Fischer is investing a lot more time and money in recruiting these days. “Previously, a lot of money went into customer acquisition and product development. In the meantime, the money mainly goes to recruiting agencies. That’s already a five-digit amount per year.” Not only is it difficult to find bakers, it’s the same with salespeople. “I don’t have any specialists there, that’s noticeable, a saleswoman specializing in the food trade with a focus on baking naturally has more knowledge. But finding unskilled workers is a challenge.”
The job is a gift, says Fischer: “We give people a piece of luck every day.”
The labor shortage is one of the greatest threats to the competitiveness of the German economy and the prosperity we enjoy today, says Marcel Fratzscher, President of the German Institute for Economic Research. Companies would fall behind in global competition if they were unable to attract sufficiently qualified employees.
That is why the federal government must, above all, initiate reforms and create more openness, tolerance and appreciation for people of different origins and in general for people with different skin colours, religions, identities and cultures. Enabling immigration and creating more training opportunities for the low-skilled is Paula Risius’ appeal. “Because we will need everyone.” The energy transition could also be made more difficult by the shortage, she warns.
