Despite a growth in the population, shortages of skilled workers persist

If current educational and employment patterns continue and working times do not increase, not even medium-term population growth in Germany will be sufficient to avoid long-term shortages in the requirements area of skilled tasks. This especially affects persons who have completed vocational education and training. By way of contrast, the fourth wave of qualification and occupational field projections prepared by the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB) and the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) show that, in the highly qualified area, the labour supply of skilled workers for complex and highly complex tasks is exhibiting a stronger long-term increase than the relevant labour demand. The new BIBB and IAB projections accord particular consideration to the effect of the migration of refugees on the development of the labour market up until the year 2035.

Because of inner-European labour market migration and the influx of refugees, Germany’s population will grow from around 81.2 million in 2014 to approximately 83.4 million by 2023. It will subsequently fall back to about 82 million by 2035. This population growth will mainly result in short-term or medium-term employment policy effects, such as an increased demand for housing and educational services.

The influx of refugees will, however, lead only to a gradual increase in the labour supply. This is firstly because almost a third of refugees are currently aged under 20 and secondly due to the fact that integration in the labour market requires time. For this reason, the medium-term growth in the population will not be able to resolve the shortages in the field of skilled tasks in the long term. An evaluation of the latest data shows that around 12.1 million persons who have completed vocational education and training will retire from working life between 2014 and 2035. By way of contrast, there will be only 9.2 million new entries to the labour market in the same period. The situation is the opposite with regard to persons with an academic qualification. In this group, 3.9 million people will leave working life whilst around 6.5 million will become available for employment.

For the first time, the joint BIBB/IAB projections indicate for which degree of complexity workers will be required. A differentiation is drawn between unskilled or semi-skilled tasks, skilled tasks, complex tasks and highly complex tasks. It is revealed that about 67 per cent of skilled tasks are performed by persons in possession of a vocational education and training qualification and that around the same proportion of highly complex tasks are exercised by graduates. The proportion of complex tasks carried out by persons with a VET qualification and those with an academic qualification are approximately 41 per cent and 25 per cent respectively. Just under a further 25 per cent of persons at this level of requirement hold an advanced training qualification. According to the study, the strong increase in the supply of persons with an academic qualification gives rise to the expectation that these workers will be even more predominantly employed in complex tasks and highly complex tasks in the future, and that this shift could take place at the expense of those who have completed vocational education and training or an advanced training qualification.

Because projections on the basis of specific individual occupations are not meaningful for such a long period of time, these occupations are collated within “occupational fields”. Just as was the case in respect of the first three waves of the survey, evaluation of the current data shows that, despite the influx of refugees, shortages can continue to be expected in “healthcare occupations” and “technical occupations”. A new aspect is that such bottlenecks are now also looming in “construction occupations” and in “woodworking, plastics manufacture and processing occupations”. On the other hand, labour supply will grow more strongly than demand in “office and commercial services occupations” and in occupational fields which are primarily occupied by persons with academic qualifications, such as “IT and natural science occupations” and “teaching occupations”. Although the consequences of digitalisation are not yet foreseeable, it is possible that demand for these knowledge-intensive occupations will increase to an even greater extent than is indicated by current developments.

The BIBB/IAB qualification and occupational field projections (QuBe Project), which are conducted in conjunction with the Institute of Economic Structures Research (GWS) and the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology (FIT), use model calculations as a basis for showing how the supply of and demand for qualifications and occupations may develop on a long-term basis.

Further information is contained within the new BIBB REPORT, Issue 3/2016: “Despite a growing population, shortages remain in the area of skilled tasks” This issue is available for download free of charge at www.bibb.de/bibbreport (German only).

For more details on the joint BIBB and IAB project, please visit https://www.bibb.de/en/11727.php

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