Study: Shortage of skilled workers continues to decrease

COLOGNE (dpa-AFX) – The shortage of skilled workers in Germany decreased again slightly in the fourth quarter of 2022. In December, the number of vacancies for which there were no suitably qualified unemployed nationwide fell to 533,000, reported the competence center for securing skilled workers (Kofa) of the employer-related Institute of German Economics (IW) on Friday. For comparison: In September, the skilled labor gap still affected almost 573,000 jobs.

The experts emphasized that the shortage of skilled workers remains at a high level. For 43.8 percent of the vacancies there is a lack of suitably qualified unemployed people. The higher the level of qualification required for a job, the more difficult it is to find suitable specialists.

According to the study, the number of vacancies for qualified applicants in all professional areas fell in the fourth quarter of 2022. The clearest decline of 8.3 percent was in the area of ​​”languages, literature, humanities, social and economic sciences, media, art, culture and design”, followed by “agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and horticulture”. a decrease of 7.1 percent. The number of vacancies also fell by 6.9 percent in the “Commercial services, merchandise trade, sales, hotel and tourism” sector.

In December, however, there was still a shortage of skilled workers, especially in the areas of “health, social affairs, teaching and education”. Here, more than half of the vacancies could not mathematically be filled with suitably qualified unemployed people. The shortage of skilled workers in the fields of “construction, architecture, surveying and building technology”, “natural science, geography and computer science” as well as “raw material extraction, production and manufacturing” was similarly large.

According to the study, there is also a desperate search for train drivers in rail traffic at the moment. Here in September there were only 13 suitably qualified unemployed for every 100 vacancies./rea/DP/zb

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