Craft occupations lack manpower, many companies desperately seek new employees. The reason: most high school graduates decide to go on to university. And professional training also brings good income.
Pia Dobelke is 24 years old and is a junior manager of a company for the construction and maintenance of plumbing and heating systems in Troisdorf, near Cologne. The company has 33 employees. In fact, at least a dozen more are needed to be able to process all the orders quickly, the young woman told German public broadcaster ARD. And companies from other sectors are in a similar situation. The reason: lack of staff.
According to data from the Federal Employment Agency, over the last ten years the number of skilled workers in the craft professions in Germany has decreased. For a long time, the number of university students and those undergoing vocational training in Germany was roughly the same. For ten years now, however, the number of students has been steadily increasing, while the number of those choosing vocational training has been decreasing. Currently, students are twice as many as those in vocational training.
As little physical work as possible
Pia Dobelke could have studied at university, but nevertheless initially chose vocational training. She passed her skilled trades exams in a special "trial training program" and then graduated with a bachelor's degree in business administration. The young woman tells ARD that she was recently invited by the high school where she studied to give a lecture on vocational training and skilled occupations as part of a career guidance day for current students. However, none of the students wanted to listen to the lecture, so it was canceled at the last moment.
The Employment Research Institute regularly surveys students about their preferences when choosing a profession. The result: they are primarily interested in making their work enjoyable, in a healthy work environment, and in minimizing physical strain. A study by the University of Applied Sciences in Cologne concluded that school leavers choose university after high school because they expect that attending provides better opportunities in the labor market and better pay.
Increasingly higher wages in skilled occupations
One of Pia Dobelke's colleagues says that his work gives him pleasure, and that the devices are getting smaller and the physical load decreases significantly with the increase in electronics. Above all, however, wages have also risen due to staff shortages. With his salary, he can afford his own house, writes ARD.
Of course, there are also branches in which you do not earn well and in which it is a matter of hard physical work. But in general, there are also many fields with good pay. And some skilled workers who have completed occupational exposure earn even better than some graduates.
The Institute for Applied Economic Research has already analyzed the social security data of almost everyone working in Germany in 2020. The result: those who gained a vocational qualification as a technician or craftsman after vocational training achieved an average income over their working life similar to the average income of university graduates.
Own business
After graduating from high school, Robert Muhleneisen began studying biochemistry. He is good in the laboratory, but despairs of theory, he himself told ARD. During one of his vacations, he took a temporary job in a craft enterprise and then decided that he would interrupt his studies and become an apprentice in a chimney-building enterprise. After passing the exam, he purposefully continued to study the subtleties of the craft.
Today he is 33 years old, has his own business with a showroom and five employees. Only in rare cases is he on construction sites and receives a salary similar to that of a young professional after graduating from university. And once a year, when the business is going well, he realizes an additional profit. As his business can continue to grow, he has high hopes for even higher earnings going forward. The German Confederation of Skilled Trades states that in the next five years alone, 125,000 existing businesses will be urgently looking for successors.