>Whether it’s IT specialists, nurses or even hairdressers — Germany is lacking skilled personnel seemingly everywhere. Is the skills gap homemade, and ultimately just a problem of wages and working conditions?
Nope. It’s true.
That’s alternative facts at work. The number of children born 10, 20 years ago is not a question of wages or working conditions. There just are less people here, and no creative accounting or blame shifting can change that or the [relation between retirees and people paying the rents](https://www.demografie-portal.de/DE/Fakten/altersrentner-beitragszahler.html).
Here, see the gap of people in their 50ies and the large part of people of 60 years old and above!? That’s the problem:
its a mix of both. In the end we have a lot of companys that could expand if they had enough workers, but also a lot of shitty companys, that cant find workers becouse of lousy pay- and treatment, that are more than willing to hop on that train.
Work is not worth the way it should have been for a long time, especially not in the last few years. That’s also part of the problem.
Just a shortage of people willing to accept shit pay
If only we had _better options for child care or the elderly_ then we could use the untapped labor that is held up in unpaid care work. Well, duh, but guess what that means, we need **more skilled workers to care for children and the elderly**.
Economists are so detached from reality sometimes. “I have here a model, the model does not disagree with what is observed. Huh, that must mean we observe it wrong”.
After the corona shut down, a lot left the service/gastronomy industry. The pay is either shit or they did earn a lot but it doesn’t reflect on the “paper” so they didn’t get all the benefits during shutdown. Other jobs like hairdressers, nurses/caretakers,…, I feel like they’re seen as 2nd-class jobs that mighty germans won’t pursue
Doctor from the UK here, currently working in a non-clinical role. Would happily work as a doctor again but there are many, many administrative hoops to jump through which amounts to about 6-12 months of chasing paperwork and signatures. Needing C1 German is the real killer though. Would it be so bad to have some lenience here? The English-speaking patient population is very large in certain states.
Of course it’s true, but the mentality is other. They even want the cleaning lady to speak fluent German…
The companies can report whether it is a myth. But the truth is the excessive bureaucracy which does not allow any flexibility when hiring (foreign) specialists and career changers. There is still a lot to learn.
12 comments
>Whether it’s IT specialists, nurses or even hairdressers — Germany is lacking skilled personnel seemingly everywhere. Is the skills gap homemade, and ultimately just a problem of wages and working conditions?
Nope. It’s true.
That’s alternative facts at work. The number of children born 10, 20 years ago is not a question of wages or working conditions. There just are less people here, and no creative accounting or blame shifting can change that or the [relation between retirees and people paying the rents](https://www.demografie-portal.de/DE/Fakten/altersrentner-beitragszahler.html).
Here, see the gap of people in their 50ies and the large part of people of 60 years old and above!? That’s the problem:
https://service.destatis.de/bevoelkerungspyramide/index.html
its a mix of both. In the end we have a lot of companys that could expand if they had enough workers, but also a lot of shitty companys, that cant find workers becouse of lousy pay- and treatment, that are more than willing to hop on that train.
Work is not worth the way it should have been for a long time, especially not in the last few years. That’s also part of the problem.
Just a shortage of people willing to accept shit pay
If only we had _better options for child care or the elderly_ then we could use the untapped labor that is held up in unpaid care work. Well, duh, but guess what that means, we need **more skilled workers to care for children and the elderly**.
Economists are so detached from reality sometimes. “I have here a model, the model does not disagree with what is observed. Huh, that must mean we observe it wrong”.
After the corona shut down, a lot left the service/gastronomy industry. The pay is either shit or they did earn a lot but it doesn’t reflect on the “paper” so they didn’t get all the benefits during shutdown. Other jobs like hairdressers, nurses/caretakers,…, I feel like they’re seen as 2nd-class jobs that mighty germans won’t pursue
Doctor from the UK here, currently working in a non-clinical role. Would happily work as a doctor again but there are many, many administrative hoops to jump through which amounts to about 6-12 months of chasing paperwork and signatures. Needing C1 German is the real killer though. Would it be so bad to have some lenience here? The English-speaking patient population is very large in certain states.
Of course it’s true, but the mentality is other. They even want the cleaning lady to speak fluent German…
The companies can report whether it is a myth. But the truth is the excessive bureaucracy which does not allow any flexibility when hiring (foreign) specialists and career changers. There is still a lot to learn.