According to a study, there is a shortage of more than half a million skilled workers in Germany.
On a twelve-month average between July 2021 and July 2022, there would be a shortage of 537,923 qualified workers across all professions, as the Funke media group reported on Friday, according to a preliminary report from a study by the Cologne Institute for Economic Research (IW).
The largest skills gap is in social work. For 20,578 vacancies there are no suitably qualified unemployed – according to IW a record value. “These specialists are lacking, for example, in career entry support, in school social work, in youth, children’s and old people’s homes or in addiction counseling, i.e. wherever people need personal support to solve social problems,” write the economists and study authors Helen Hickmann and Filiz Koneberg.
According to the IW survey, the gap for educators is similarly large: 20,500 educator positions cannot be filled. “Here, too, the shortage of skilled workers reached a record level,” says the study. Accordingly, 18,279 positions remained vacant in geriatric care, 16,974 positions in building electrics and 16,839 positions in health and nursing care.
But plumbing, heating and air conditioning companies are also increasingly unable to find staff. According to IW, an average of 14,013 vacancies have remained unfilled in the past twelve months. Computer scientists (13,638 vacancies), physiotherapists (12,060), automotive technicians (11,771) and professional drivers (10,562) were therefore also in high demand. The IW expects the situation to worsen among professional drivers, since “the employees are older than average and there is also a lack of young people”.
