Germany goes from labour shortages to hiring freezes

SockThief

https://archive.ph/FtxZ9

oytis

Jokes on FT, we have both

joe_mamba

There was never a labor shortage, just a shortage of pay from unscrupulous employers being addicted to cheap labor.

spwa4

Creating an ever-larger union makes goods cheap(er) by moving jobs out of expensive markets. Surprised?

AdrianB1

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).

woodpanel

FT is four years late to this.

markvdb

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.

aleda145

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.

ololobus

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