Education News
Germany to endorse measures responding to skilled labor shortage
The Financial Times (7/15, Benoit) reports that Germany is affected by a "rapidly worsening skills shortage, one that the government is responding to with a package of measures due to go before the cabinet" Tuesday. According to the Financial Times, the cabinet "is expected to endorse a series of measures to open up Germany's closed labor market to foreign graduates in an attempt to tackle" the skills shortage. "Economists and business representatives have welcomed the move, even though they see it as a timid step that will leave many hurdles in place for foreign graduates eager to settle in Germany." However, "trade unionists, in particular, see" the measures "as further steps towards the creation of a global market for labor, and therefore a threat to the country's comparatively high wages." The Financial Times points out that "engineers, in particular, are in increasingly short supply and finding them has become" difficult. While "the number of university graduates has increased from 214,000 a year to 254,000 since 1995, engineering graduates have fallen by 10,000 to 39,000."
"The trainee shortage is especially acute in Germany's eastern states," Deutsche Welle (7/14) noted. Hanns-Eberhard Schleyer, secretary general of the Central Association of German Skilled Workers, "predicts that in these states, the number of applicants for trainee positions will have fallen 50 percent by 2011 -- reflecting a marked drop in the number of qualified school-leavers in recent years." According to the article, "this explains why so many companies are having problems meeting their skilled labor needs with young workers." Schleyer argued, "Our companies need new blood, they need skilled labor. In Germany it is becoming increasingly hard to find qualified young people to train."
