Cross-industry staff shortage in Germany

Suzana Bernhard, Managing Director of the DEKRA Arbeit Group, explains the current situation on the labor market in an interview with the Stuttgarter Nachrichten newspaper

For many years, the shortage of skilled workers has been one of the biggest challenges facing the labor market. Well-trained employees are in short supply - and the situation has become even worse with the start of the pandemic, as Suzana Bernhard, Managing Director of the DEKRA Arbeit Group, outlines in an interview with Stuttgarter Nachrichten.

A central topic of the discussion was the recent development on the national job market, with a clearly recognizable decline in applicants and a simultaneous sharp rise in wages. And by no means just in the specialist sector. According to Bernhard, this problem has long been affecting “the entire range of qualifications and all sectors”. Even simple unskilled jobs can no longer be filled - or at least not as quickly. Where there used to be around 40 to 50 good applications for a job advertisement, the selection is now much smaller.

There is also the factor of working hours and quality of life. According to Bernhard, DEKRA Arbeit's experience shows that “many people do not want to work more than 30 hours a week - and the gain in quality of life does not only consist of a high monthly income”. Nowadays, the work-life balance is at least as important a criterion for recruiting employees as the salary.

Overall, the DEKRA Arbeit Group is assuming a short-term increase in staffing requirements on the customer side of a good 10 to 15 percent - not least due to the remaining sickness and quarantine absences. However, even the experienced HR experts at the approximately 100 DEKRA Arbeit locations across Germany are unable to immediately cover all personnel requirements in all regions given the current labor market situation and the ongoing problems caused by the coronavirus pandemic - with short-time working in production remaining unchanged in some cases or generally still above-average downtimes.

Source: Stuttgarter Nachrichten