The Missing Three Million

I often comment on the population problem of Germany....that the birth-rate is a huge problem going forward (has been this way since the 1960s).

I noted in SWR news today that a research institute has done a big study over the birth-rate, and looked at the topic of craftsmen in Germany.  The Basel-located group....Prognos....did the project.

So what Prognos said in the end.....roughly 23 years from now (2040)....there will be three million German skilled workers missing.

Always in the past when folks talked about the birth-rate problem....they talked general population numbers...NEVER skilled craftsmen.

A while back....the Work Minister for the German government (Nahles) spoke up about the issue and the ministry had some numbers that related the problem by 2030 at 700,000 missing.

How big a deal is the three million missing craftsmen?  There are various ways that you could look upon the problem.

First, automation is coming and already a big part of German industry.  It's possible that half of these missing craftsmen won't really be missed that much.

Second, German companies have a lot of incentives to offer, and it's possible that you might see various immigrants (maybe even South Koreans or Japanese) arrive and start to fill some of these craftsmen fields.

Third, the German system does have a fairly capable education system in the background....so training people to reach this craftsman plateau is not the big issue....simply finding capable people to come in and fill the training slots is likely the more pressing issue.

The difference between the gov't study and the foundation study?  It's a ten-year difference on the end-result.  Maybe with the Nahles government study....if they went to 2040....they'd be near the 2-million point.  Some discussions today center around people wanting early retirement (age 55) and maybe the private foundation thinks a lot of people will go this way between 2020 and 2040.

The curious thing out of this that I see....is that you might wake up to realize this unique heating system you bought for your house is broke, and by this point of 2040....there are only 200-trained technicians over all of Germany who can repair or dig into such a system, and then you find out that the nearest guy to you has a pretty full schedule for three weeks before he can come and repair your system.