The economic boom has led Germany to record employment and exacerbated the shortage of skilled personnel
As reported on January 3 by the Federal Employment Agency (BA) in Nuremberg, in the past December there were 2.385 million unemployed in Germany, which is 183,000 fewer than in December 2016, and amounts to 5.3 percent of the working-age population. At the same time, the BA published the average figure for the entire year 2017. It fell to 2.533 million (5.7 percent) and was the lowest since German reunification in 1990.
A day earlier, on January 2, the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) in Wiesbaden published the average employment figure for the entire year 2017, and it also turned out to be a record: last year, 44.3 million people were employed in Germany. This is 1.5 percent or 638,000 people more than the average for 2016. Such a powerful jump in employment has not been observed in Germany for ten years.
As Deutsche Welle notes, all this is the result of a long-term upswing in the German economy, which accelerated noticeably in the second half of 2017 despite difficulties in forming a new German government. For 2018, leading economic institutes predict a further acceleration in Germany's GDP growth and, accordingly, an increase in employment. According to forecasts, it will exceed 45 million people in the next year and a half.
At the same time, experts no longer expect a further significant reduction in the unemployment rate in Germany. The fact is that in developed market economies, a figure of about 5 percent is considered a sign of virtually full employment. After all, there is always a certain number of people in society who are extremely difficult or practically impossible to employ for various reasons, primarily due to their lack of any qualifications.
Already now, on the German labor market, with 2.385 million unemployed, there are 761,000 vacancies (data for December 2017). And these vacancies are becoming a brake on economic development. According to a study published at the very end of last year by the Federal Association of Small and Medium-Sized Businesses (BVMW), 40 percent of surveyed enterprises stated that they had already had to turn down orders due to a lack of qualified personnel. And 89 percent confirmed that they experience difficulties in finding the right employees.
These difficulties will increase even more in the coming months. At a press conference on January 3, the head of the Federal Employment Agency, Detlef Scheele, announced that German companies are expected to create 600,000 new jobs this year.
Some of all these vacancies may be filled with registered unemployed if they successfully undergo appropriate training or retraining. A certain part of the new jobs will be taken by young people – graduates of various educational institutions. In addition, in recent years, employment growth in Germany has been greatly facilitated by women who have not worked for a long time and, having raised children, are now returning to the labor market.
However, internal labor resources are clearly insufficient for today's Germany to fully supply its growing economy with the necessary personnel. Experts are unanimous: the German labor market requires a constant influx of qualified foreign labor migrants.
The simplest path, which enterprises in Germany have followed for many years, is to attract workers from EU countries, because as EU citizens they do not need any special permits – they have the same rights as Germans. But recently, scientists have increasingly warned that the potential of EU countries has been largely exhausted. Moreover, as the eurozone states overcome the consequences of the debt crisis and gain economic momentum, the likelihood of an outflow of specialists who came to Germany back to their home countries increases.
Therefore, the head of the Federal Employment Agency, Detlef Scheele, stated at the end of last year: "I will say with all certainty: we will not be able to do without attracting workers from third countries in the coming years." Third countries refer to states not belonging to the EU – for example, India, Russia, Ukraine, or Belarus.
Workers from these countries with higher or secondary specialized education already have the opportunity to get a job in Germany together with a residence permit. With the adoption of an immigration law, the process of attracting labor migrants to the country (not to be confused with the admission of refugees for humanitarian reasons!) should become more orderly, and the conditions and criteria for admitting foreign workers should become more transparent and understandable.
Both business, scientists, the employment agency, and a number of parties advocate for the adoption of such a law. However, it is not yet clear when and in what form it will be adopted, since Germany still does not have a government approved by parliament that could draft the bill and bring it to a vote.
Meanwhile, the shortage of skilled personnel is growing. In a press release published on January 3, the Federal Employment Agency indicates that in 2017, the largest number of vacancies were in such sectors as transport and logistics, sales, metalworking, mechanical and automotive engineering, energy, electrical engineering, construction, and healthcare (including care for the sick and elderly).
And the German Economic Institute (IW) in Cologne published on December 22 the results of a study according to which the most acute shortage of skilled personnel is felt not in the German capital, Berlin, but in the southwest of the country, in the industrially developed state of Baden-Württemberg, as well as in Thuringia and Rhineland-Palatinate, especially in rural areas.