BERLIN (Reuters) – A growing number of German companies are complaining about a shortage of trainees, the DIHK Chambers of Commerce and Industry said on Wednesday.
Almost half of the German companies surveyed – a record-high 47% – had trouble finding trainees in 2022, according to a DIHK online poll among more than 14,000 companies. The poll was conducted in May.
This is well above its level in 2010, when only one in four companies were facing this problem, according to the DIHK.
The situation is particularly difficult in gastronomy, industry and commerce, the survey showed.
Germany, like industrialised countries around the world, is facing deep labour shortages due to demographic changes, which are taking their toll on the economy.
The baby boomer generation is retiring and Generation Z cannot compensate for this.
According to the DIHK, there are about 100,000 fewer students finishing school than ten years ago. This means there will soon be 400,000 more people who leave the labour market than who enter it.
Despite the worrying results of the survey for 2022, the current figures on training contracts concluded by the end of July are slightly positive, said Achim Dercks, deputy managing Director of the DIHK.
Just under 207,000 training contracts had been signed in the first six months of this year, 3.7% more than in the same period last year.
“There are overall good prospects that in 2023 more companies and trainees will find each other through a training contract than in the than in the previous year,” Dercks said.
(Reporting by Maria Martinez in Berlin; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
