BERLIN, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Businesses in the German handicrafts trade are desperately looking for skilled workers, a report published on Monday by the German Confederation of Skilled Crafts (ZDH) warns.
According to the report, nearly half of companies in the sector currently experienced difficulties in filling vacancies. "In some cases, the backlog of orders in our businesses is so large that they have to decline new customers orders because they simply do not have enough staff to do the work," a statement by the ZDH read.
The ZDH blamed the development on falling numbers of school graduates and a growing tendency for pupils to choose university studies over vocational jobs training after they complete their secondary education. "This (trend) has witnessed the devaluation of the system of dual education," the confederation complained.
Germany's "dual education system", comprising two distinct university and apprenticeship routes, is frequently cited as a key reason for relatively-low levels of youth unemployment in the country. ZDH lamented on Monday, however, that "too few youths chose an apprenticeship in the skilled crafts" over several years. As a consequence, it was now urgently necessary to give vocational training the recognition it deserved again in society.
ZDH members are scheduled to discuss the topic at the organization's annual "fall conference" in Boppard on Wednesday. "We need a balance of vocationally- and academically-trained workers, otherwise the foundation of our economy will erode," the report published ahead of the event argued.
Complaints about a shortage of skilled workers are not unique to the handicrafts industry in Germany. A study published recently by the accountancy PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) found that two thirds of companies polled (62 percent) had difficulties finding qualified staff.
Vacancies in companies where fast-growing start-ups competed with established industry representatives, including coders, software engineers, Information Technology (IT) security experts, were hereby particularly hard to fill. As a consequence, the share of firms in related industries which planned to hire new staff fell from 67 percent in 2017 to 61 percent in 2018.
Earlier, a study by the German Digital Association (Bitkom) estimated that there is a current shortage of 55,000 IT specialists in Germany. The situation was partially attributed to salary expectations which could not be met by employers. "Start-ups usually cannot pay the salaries offered by established firms," the study authors explained.
