The job market all over the world is ultimately changing. Wars, AI, energy crisis, etc. — it’s a combination of factors. Yet, the article is too shallow, so it doesn’t clarify much.
The two examples are not really representative, “press spokesman at a small industry association” and entry-level “apprenticeship in marketing communications and a bachelor’s degree in international management”. I don’t want to say that they are completely bs jobs but, well, these are quite niche. Both seem to be only ‘affordable’ for a strong economy, not during an economic instability.
What I’d like to get answers to is why if everyone says about shortages of nurses, doctors, teachers, plumbers and other handymen, highly qualified engineers capable of making some complex stuff like rockets; I don’t really see any policy makers pushing to make such jobs more appealing, I don’t see people around talking about moving to any of such areas even if they struggle or lose their office/corporate jobs, or talking about their kids learning to do one of them
And here I have the same impression: there's a lot of talk and very little action (not nothing, just too little in comparison). An important source of problem identification talk is the opposition, which noticed that to criticize is very easy, it attracts attention and supporters, while actually FIXING things is a shitload of work and better leave it for the others. It reminds me of a recent read about Locard's exchange principle: every contact will bring something into the scene and leave with something from it, and the opposition cannot stand to be washed down by actually trying to fix something.
I am not so sure we really have or had both. Maybe for roles like electrician and tiler and such. But for roles like teachers, I feel it is not the case, or policy makers are extremely stupid here. The hurdles for someone to become a teacher without having studied that are still very high. It doesn't seem like policies a nation would implement, if they really wanted more teachers. For example you need to have 500h of base level pedagogy training (which would be OK) and of course you need to be very knowledgeable in the subject you want to teach (also makes sense), but that's not enough, no, they want, that usually after 3 years you teach 2 subjects, not only the one you are knowledgeable in. So you are expected to either have sufficient knowledge (lectures at university count towards that, but may well not be sufficient) in a second subject, or to somehow catch up on that.
In my case, I did consider becoming a teacher for IT stuff. Not really "IT", as pupils would first learn the basics of course, and the really interesting stuff might not even fit into the curriculum, but I could well imagine teaching what I know and maybe even establishing an extracurricular computer programming club or something. I would feel great passing on my knowledge. But what second subject to teach? ... The only other applicable thing I had in some amount during my studies is ... math. Ugh. You telling me I might have to take additional math lectures, with people who study to become math teachers?! No friggin way man. Also am not a native English speaker, and while I use English every day all day long, I don't think I have the detailed knowledge to teach it responsibly to students, unless they are total beginners, but I won't be teaching IT stuff in primary school, now will I.
If you stick to only one subject, perhaps they will tolerate you, but your salary will forever be a reduced one, even if you work the same hours, just because you only do one subject, and no matter how much of an expert you are.
When it comes to IT/software engineering I don't think there ever was a shortage. Just businesses, implementing big tech hiring processes for their tiny startups and then playing surprised pikachu, that they are "not finding talent".
Berlin has recently solved teacher shortage by cutting positions. Saxony pushes for stripping teachers of a privileged civil servant status, because who needs teachers when we don't have children anyway. I don't think Germany has a shortage here really, especially as birth rates are falling even further
Policy makers are not stupid, the system is working as intended.
The intention is to destroy public education in favor of private schools. Same as public health care has been systematically destroyed. It's all part of the neoliberal agenda.
Or take mental health care. We have enough therapists but we don't allow them to work with patients on public health care. We give that license only to a select few ensuring that people wait 6 months to a year if they want to get a therapy spot. Otherwise too many people would get therapy and that would cost money.
The goal is to make rich people richer and ensure they have enough desperate and cheap labor to exploit.
In comparison, Switzerland recognized the problems in the education system and... I know somebody, former construction foreman, now working as a primary school teacher - also doing some pedagogy courses in parallel. Is this better? Probably better than nothing, although far from ideal. But, would it be smarter to just wait, waist deep in the dumpster, for ideal solutions?
> It doesn't seem like policies a nation would implement, if they really wanted more teachers.
Aren't those hurdles put in by teachers' unions to ensure they maintain a leverage over their jobs market? Same is for doctors, notaries, etc in a lot of countries.
None of what he listed is some kind of outrageous demand. You can disagree about the "two subjects" thing and it would be valid disagreement, but hardly an outrageous one. A teacher teaching two subjects is not even some kind of German specific thing.
No, there are never enough experts for everything. I mean, how can there ever be enough 18 year old workers, fresh from college, with 20 years experience on a technology which will only be released next month, who are willing to work for minimum wage and a rotten fruit basket while upskilling themselves in their own private time?
Oh so lobbying the EU comission to both slash CO2 targets and adding tolls to chinese EV cars did not actually make German auto manufacturers more competitive. Who would have thunk?
Yes I'm bitter how much influence the German car companies have over the union.
One could reasonably have expected much worse than "just" automotive and energy intensive sectors in crisis in Germany.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Trump administration actively shrinking the economic cake worldwide. Its active economic and cultural warfare against Europe. Nothing to sneeze at.
Germany and by extension the EU have shown remarkable resilience for now. The question what will happen next should an actual crisis follow. Don't be surprised should Europe further integrate its capital markets and defense to some extent.
Carmakers in Germany has a bit of blame for not moving quickly enough, but China hogging materials doesn't help.
The chemical sector hit though feels more self-inflicted by the government that closed down nuclear plants to rely on Russian gas. The annoying part (Nordstream unrelated) is that they didn't see it fit to put a brake on the nuclear decomissioning already in 2014 when Russia invaded Ukraine first.
Define quickly. The problems are known for 10+ years, the calling is around for even longer. Germany car-industry has been stagnating for decades, rotting through the system even today, years after all those crises have starting killing it.
Indians. Well educated, hard working, and willing to put in 20 years of serfdom to get that green card. Even a 30% discount on wages is still a better quality of life than their alternatives.
If they were granted proper work visas with portability then wages would go up. That's why Elon and co love H1Bs.
India recently reached below-replacement fertility rate - if examples from other countries are anything to go by, sooner or later the Indian government will implement aggressive anti-brain-drain policies.
Germany has relied on immigration since the 1960s at least. The immigrants won't save them now, as there are too many factors working against that.
-USA can offer higher wages.
-EU members to the east can offer significantly lower taxes for specialists and lower costs of living in some respects.
-As mentioned before, India itself might be facing shortages soon enough.
Almost as if you had different groups of flawed humans with different visions, beliefs and goals trying to somehow govern the country. It’s not like other countries are always acting rationally…
Getting rid of nuclear was a completely obvious blunder, I don’t think that says much about German people being weird or wanting to get rid of their industry. It was a short-termist political decision
Isn't German economy strongly tied to performance of its car manufactures? Them being out competed might started about 3-4 years ago but the impact on other sectors would take some time.
The article is low quality. It talks a bit about the problem, not about the cause and it does not help anyone.
The example at the beginning seems to be a now classic "I have a degree in an area where supply greatly exceeds demand". There is demand, there is supply, but there is a misalignment of qualifications and interests. If "well-qualified people" means fresh graduates in domains with low demand, then the qualification does not matter. In areas like constructions and handymen there is a serious shortage, if not a crisis, in the entire Western Europe. There are jobs, but not the ones most people want.
Too many people go to universities for a degree without checking if there is demand for these degree. Many that I know go to universities just to have a degree, they don't even care what is the domain. I have a childhood friend that is regularly unemployed, he is a historian, but he does not like working in archeological sites and there is not enough need for historians. At the same time we cannot find enough people for construction works, it is hard work and most people don't want it (diversity and equality does not work in such jobs, never did).
> Too many people go to universities for a degree without checking if there is demand for these degree.
I agree for certain fields such as your example but until recently software engineers were in disproportional demand and that has changed pretty dramatically in less time than one would need to get a degree in the field.
Edit: And the example of people working in construction: I know a few. Their companies are booked out for the next 2 years. They, however have shitty pay and disproportionately many work-caused health problems. The owners of those companies are having a good time though.
A 24 year old friend works construction, building and restoring facades and such. Makes 70-80k Euros/year with his own schwarzgeld overtime outside of work. It's on par with a senior SW engineer with 10YOE here. Hard work indeed, but not poorly paid.
It's only poorly paid for unskilled positions in construction that are basically human carrying robots who haven't yet been automated.
Employers not wanting to pay the market price out of greed is one thing, but you're forgetting the government distorting the labor market with generous welfare payments for those which choose to avoid work they don't like and haven't contributed to the system, making employment taxes high and CoL higher for those who do work and contribute. It takes two to tango after all.
I once met this foreign guy in Germany who lived a life bouncing between seasonal part time work and unemployment and laughed at me when he heard I was working and how much I was making. He said, "why don't you go on welfare and have kids instead? The government pays your rent and bills and no more stress from work."
IMHO if you want to restore balance in the jobs market, then you need to cut welfare, employment taxes and government bureaucracy. As long as government burdens both the employee and employer with crazy taxes and red tape, and then redistributes those taxes poorly via corruption, populism and incompetence, then of course the market will always be distorted and fucked and there will always be a simultaneous shortage and an oversupply, never a balance.
Does German welfare really pay generous benefits if people avoid working altogether?
I really don't know much about it, I'd have assumed it follows a similar model to the Swedish one: you can be on benefits while searching for a job, there's even a government agency tasked with finding positions you might qualify, you are required to apply to X jobs a month, and if you get offered a job you need to take it or you will get benefits cut.
Of course, there are ways to prolong it but it's definitely not enough to create major distortions, you will eventually run the clock out on the unemployment payments. Also to have decent unemployment you need to have contributed to an unemployment fund, there's a national one available to all citizens which doesn't pay much, otherwise you need to have funded the one provided by your union.
I dunno man, people are complaining about not being able to secure a vocational training position, especially as a foreigner. Maybe a bit of diversity and equality could help
A friend of mine went to Berlin to learn German. She's Spanish of Moroccan Berber origin... She said she encountered barely any native speakers, and many people tried to speak English to her instead. She ended up quitting as a result. I was in part of suburban Frankfurt am Main and had a similar experience. So depending on where you are, there is plenty of diversity. Like most larger European cities, Frankfurt and Berlin now lack sense of place while having a sense of anomie.
Berlin and Frankfurt are the most international places in Germany. It’s like going to Zurich and Geneva and saying that people speak English. If you step outside of those 2 places you will face german more often.
Though I really doubt your anecdotes, I lived in Berlin for years as a non-German speaker, you have a lot of native speakers all around, you often do not notice when you’re not integrated but once you start following native Germans they bring you to groups and places where the language is way more common.
From your own link 30% is the widest definition possible:
> As of 2024, around 17.4 million people living in Germany, or 20.9% of the population, are first-generation immigrants, while the population with a migrant background in the wider sense stood at approximately 25.2 million, accounting for 30.2% of the total population of 83.5 million
"Migrant background" is really broad indeed, it takes just one parent who wasn't born with a German parent to be considered as having a "background". Also most of them are EU migrants
Yes, sorry, there is a lot of diversity of course, especially on the lower level. It's rather equality and inclusion that need improving.
It's an anecdotal evidence, but while looking for a job I liked looking up employees on linkedin, then looking up the leadership on company's website. First one would always be much more diverse than the second one
Same for me; but what they did not tell, because it was not needed at that time, is that not everyone is capable of going to an university, the admission was tough and the school was hard, so people were filtered by capabilities. 20 years later universities doubled the number of students as they made it a business first, not education first, so we got too many people with worthless diploma and no qualifications and no potential.
We all got told this. The trouble is that it isn't always true. A good STEM degree could do, but so many others don't. Now we're seeing the slow death of some of the professions, and it's started with accountancy.
> , he is a historian, but he does not like working in archeological sites
Most historians who work as historians dont work in archeological sites, so I dont see how that part is relevant.
> In areas like constructions and handymen there is a serious shortage, if not a crisis, in the entire Western Europe. There are jobs, but not the ones most people want.
Are salaries going up?
> it is hard work and most people don't want it (diversity and equality does not work in such jobs, never did)
Like, you mean, immigrants wont be accepted if they apply? Cause wherever I was, these low level jobs were exactly the jobs where immigrants went first - they would hire literally almost anyone as they were not picky on language knowledge, cultural knowledge or even skills. All they asked for was time and ability to accept low salary with not too great conditions.
But, if they wont accept immigrants on principle, the inability to find workers is their own problem. Native Germans has obviously more options.
> It talks a bit about the problem, not about the cause and it does not help anyone.
Nobody wants to talk about the cause because it's not politically correct: Government paying people enough to avoid doing work they don't like, thereby distorting the labor market.
> If "well-qualified people" means fresh graduates in domains with low demand, then the qualification does not matter.
It matters because generations of young people have been gaslit by the government and by society that a degree from a prestigious government accredited university is a meal ticket.
>areas like constructions and handymen there is a serious shortage, if not a crisis, in the entire Western Europe.
You think Eastern Europe is spared? Who do you think works on construction sites in Western Europe, if not Eastern Europeans.
>it is hard work and most people don't want it
Cut all welfare and government handouts, cut taxes on labor and on employment.
I live in Romania and we have high taxes on labor (but very low for journalists, so they are happy) and we have labor shortage in some areas - in my grandparent's village it because a lot of young people are working in Germany and also because people don't have kids. But we have places where 1/3 of the inhabitants live on welfare and that is less than 100 km away, also in rural area.
Are you sure the wages don't rise in high demand, low supply areas? We all just read the 7 figure salaries for people in AI stolen from one big company to another, what is that?
Yes, companies are picky, but it is slowly changing. They cannot afford to be picky anymore, but change takes time.
Germany was one of the prototypes for the European Union in my view. I'm not talking about violent expansion but the Zollverein and other similar processes which united Prussia, Saxony, Bavaria with a number of other Länder.
The two examples are not really representative, “press spokesman at a small industry association” and entry-level “apprenticeship in marketing communications and a bachelor’s degree in international management”. I don’t want to say that they are completely bs jobs but, well, these are quite niche. Both seem to be only ‘affordable’ for a strong economy, not during an economic instability.
What I’d like to get answers to is why if everyone says about shortages of nurses, doctors, teachers, plumbers and other handymen, highly qualified engineers capable of making some complex stuff like rockets; I don’t really see any policy makers pushing to make such jobs more appealing, I don’t see people around talking about moving to any of such areas even if they struggle or lose their office/corporate jobs, or talking about their kids learning to do one of them
In my case, I did consider becoming a teacher for IT stuff. Not really "IT", as pupils would first learn the basics of course, and the really interesting stuff might not even fit into the curriculum, but I could well imagine teaching what I know and maybe even establishing an extracurricular computer programming club or something. I would feel great passing on my knowledge. But what second subject to teach? ... The only other applicable thing I had in some amount during my studies is ... math. Ugh. You telling me I might have to take additional math lectures, with people who study to become math teachers?! No friggin way man. Also am not a native English speaker, and while I use English every day all day long, I don't think I have the detailed knowledge to teach it responsibly to students, unless they are total beginners, but I won't be teaching IT stuff in primary school, now will I.
If you stick to only one subject, perhaps they will tolerate you, but your salary will forever be a reduced one, even if you work the same hours, just because you only do one subject, and no matter how much of an expert you are.
When it comes to IT/software engineering I don't think there ever was a shortage. Just businesses, implementing big tech hiring processes for their tiny startups and then playing surprised pikachu, that they are "not finding talent".
The intention is to destroy public education in favor of private schools. Same as public health care has been systematically destroyed. It's all part of the neoliberal agenda.
Or take mental health care. We have enough therapists but we don't allow them to work with patients on public health care. We give that license only to a select few ensuring that people wait 6 months to a year if they want to get a therapy spot. Otherwise too many people would get therapy and that would cost money.
The goal is to make rich people richer and ensure they have enough desperate and cheap labor to exploit.
Aren't those hurdles put in by teachers' unions to ensure they maintain a leverage over their jobs market? Same is for doctors, notaries, etc in a lot of countries.
Yes I'm bitter how much influence the German car companies have over the union.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Trump administration actively shrinking the economic cake worldwide. Its active economic and cultural warfare against Europe. Nothing to sneeze at.
Germany and by extension the EU have shown remarkable resilience for now. The question what will happen next should an actual crisis follow. Don't be surprised should Europe further integrate its capital markets and defense to some extent.
The chemical sector hit though feels more self-inflicted by the government that closed down nuclear plants to rely on Russian gas. The annoying part (Nordstream unrelated) is that they didn't see it fit to put a brake on the nuclear decomissioning already in 2014 when Russia invaded Ukraine first.
If they were granted proper work visas with portability then wages would go up. That's why Elon and co love H1Bs.
Germany has relied on immigration since the 1960s at least. The immigrants won't save them now, as there are too many factors working against that.
-USA can offer higher wages.
-EU members to the east can offer significantly lower taxes for specialists and lower costs of living in some respects.
-As mentioned before, India itself might be facing shortages soon enough.
Personally, I'm not seeing it.
People who shut down nuclear and coal plants in favour of unreliable wind and solar.
It's almost as if they want to close down their industry.
Getting rid of nuclear was a completely obvious blunder, I don’t think that says much about German people being weird or wanting to get rid of their industry. It was a short-termist political decision
People who want to cling on to fossil fuels from other countries.
It's almost as if they want to be dependent.
The example at the beginning seems to be a now classic "I have a degree in an area where supply greatly exceeds demand". There is demand, there is supply, but there is a misalignment of qualifications and interests. If "well-qualified people" means fresh graduates in domains with low demand, then the qualification does not matter. In areas like constructions and handymen there is a serious shortage, if not a crisis, in the entire Western Europe. There are jobs, but not the ones most people want.
Too many people go to universities for a degree without checking if there is demand for these degree. Many that I know go to universities just to have a degree, they don't even care what is the domain. I have a childhood friend that is regularly unemployed, he is a historian, but he does not like working in archeological sites and there is not enough need for historians. At the same time we cannot find enough people for construction works, it is hard work and most people don't want it (diversity and equality does not work in such jobs, never did).
I agree for certain fields such as your example but until recently software engineers were in disproportional demand and that has changed pretty dramatically in less time than one would need to get a degree in the field.
Edit: And the example of people working in construction: I know a few. Their companies are booked out for the next 2 years. They, however have shitty pay and disproportionately many work-caused health problems. The owners of those companies are having a good time though.
A 24 year old friend works construction, building and restoring facades and such. Makes 70-80k Euros/year with his own schwarzgeld overtime outside of work. It's on par with a senior SW engineer with 10YOE here. Hard work indeed, but not poorly paid.
It's only poorly paid for unskilled positions in construction that are basically human carrying robots who haven't yet been automated.
There is no such thing as a shortage in labor markets. There is just people not willing to pay the correct price.
I once met this foreign guy in Germany who lived a life bouncing between seasonal part time work and unemployment and laughed at me when he heard I was working and how much I was making. He said, "why don't you go on welfare and have kids instead? The government pays your rent and bills and no more stress from work."
IMHO if you want to restore balance in the jobs market, then you need to cut welfare, employment taxes and government bureaucracy. As long as government burdens both the employee and employer with crazy taxes and red tape, and then redistributes those taxes poorly via corruption, populism and incompetence, then of course the market will always be distorted and fucked and there will always be a simultaneous shortage and an oversupply, never a balance.
I really don't know much about it, I'd have assumed it follows a similar model to the Swedish one: you can be on benefits while searching for a job, there's even a government agency tasked with finding positions you might qualify, you are required to apply to X jobs a month, and if you get offered a job you need to take it or you will get benefits cut.
Of course, there are ways to prolong it but it's definitely not enough to create major distortions, you will eventually run the clock out on the unemployment payments. Also to have decent unemployment you need to have contributed to an unemployment fund, there's a national one available to all citizens which doesn't pay much, otherwise you need to have funded the one provided by your union.
Though I really doubt your anecdotes, I lived in Berlin for years as a non-German speaker, you have a lot of native speakers all around, you often do not notice when you’re not integrated but once you start following native Germans they bring you to groups and places where the language is way more common.
Germans often switch to English when they hear an accent or hesitation
Is Germany not enough diverse for you?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Germany
> As of 2024, around 17.4 million people living in Germany, or 20.9% of the population, are first-generation immigrants, while the population with a migrant background in the wider sense stood at approximately 25.2 million, accounting for 30.2% of the total population of 83.5 million
Thats a very misleading statistic
It's an anecdotal evidence, but while looking for a job I liked looking up employees on linkedin, then looking up the leadership on company's website. First one would always be much more diverse than the second one
Most historians who work as historians dont work in archeological sites, so I dont see how that part is relevant.
> In areas like constructions and handymen there is a serious shortage, if not a crisis, in the entire Western Europe. There are jobs, but not the ones most people want.
Are salaries going up?
> it is hard work and most people don't want it (diversity and equality does not work in such jobs, never did)
Like, you mean, immigrants wont be accepted if they apply? Cause wherever I was, these low level jobs were exactly the jobs where immigrants went first - they would hire literally almost anyone as they were not picky on language knowledge, cultural knowledge or even skills. All they asked for was time and ability to accept low salary with not too great conditions.
But, if they wont accept immigrants on principle, the inability to find workers is their own problem. Native Germans has obviously more options.
Nobody wants to talk about the cause because it's not politically correct: Government paying people enough to avoid doing work they don't like, thereby distorting the labor market.
> If "well-qualified people" means fresh graduates in domains with low demand, then the qualification does not matter.
It matters because generations of young people have been gaslit by the government and by society that a degree from a prestigious government accredited university is a meal ticket.
>areas like constructions and handymen there is a serious shortage, if not a crisis, in the entire Western Europe.
You think Eastern Europe is spared? Who do you think works on construction sites in Western Europe, if not Eastern Europeans.
>it is hard work and most people don't want it
Cut all welfare and government handouts, cut taxes on labor and on employment.
Eastern Europe has the former, and as for the latter entrepreneurs in the industry just don't pay their taxes - ask me how I know.
There's still a shortage.
Strangely the wages don’t rise as one would expect.
And companies are picky, they want a perfect fit for their position including the work processes and programs.
Delusional.
Yes, companies are picky, but it is slowly changing. They cannot afford to be picky anymore, but change takes time.
Surprised?
Stop watching Fox News.
Unions in Germany have less power than in France for instance. The rights to strike are more restrictive