Close to half of German companies face a shortage of trainees -survey

BERLIN (Reuters) -A growing number of German companies are facing a shortage of trainees, the DIHK Chambers of Commerce and Industry said on Wednesday, as Germany like other industrialised countries grapples with deep labour shortages due to demographic changes.

Almost half of the German companies surveyed – a record-high 47% – had trouble finding trainees, according to a DIHK online poll conducted in May among more than 14,000 companies.

This is well above its level in 2010, when only one in four companies were facing this problem, according to the DIHK. This poll has been conducted since 2005.

Of those companies that could not fill the vacancies for trainees, 37% said they did not receive a single application.

The situation is particularly difficult in hotels and restaurants, industry and commerce, the survey showed. The shortage of trainees affects 62% of the hotels and restaurants.

Industrialised countries around the world are struggling with deep labour shortages as the baby boomer generation (those born 1946 to 1964) retires, leaving some vacancies Generation Z (born from 1997-2012) cannot fill.

According to the DIHK, there are about 100,000 fewer students finishing school than 10 years ago. This means there will soon be 400,000 more people who leave the labour market than who enter it.

“Another problem is that many young people do not know what to do after they leave school,” said Achim Dercks, deputy managing director of the DIHK. Therefore, 80% of the companies surveyed want to increase their efforts in vocational orientation, with 61% of them keen to offer more internships as a practical insight into the day-to-day work.

Despite the worrying results of the survey for 2022, the current figures on training contracts concluded by the end of July are slightly positive, Dercks said at a presentation of the survey results in Berlin.

Just under 207,000 training contracts were 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 previous year, Dercks said.

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