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Joachim Gerd Ulrich, Simone Flemming, Elisabeth M. Krekel
Of the training place applicants registered with the Federal Employment Agency (Bundesagentur für Arbeit - BA) about 3 700 more than in the previous year had started an apprenticeship in the period up to 30 September 2006. Yet at the same time, the number of "applicants not yet placed" rose by 9,000 to 49,500, the highest figure since reunification. The difference between the number of unfilled training places and the number of unplaced applicants was 34,100, the greatest it has ever been since the beginning of the nineties.
The business statistics of the BA thus indicate that the situation on the training place market is still very tense. The fact that more young people were "not yet placed" as of 30 September 2006 despite the slightly greater number of apprenticeship starters is the direct result of another very sharp increase in the number of so-called "old applicants".
This is the term applied to training place applicants registered with the BA who left school not in the current placement year but in the previous year or even earlier. The number of such applicants increased by 43,200 (+13%) to 385,200 in 2006. In contrast, the number of current-year school leavers among the registered applicants dropped by 26,400 (-7%) to 372,500. That means that there are now more "old applicants" than current school leavers among the applicants registered with the BA in Germany.
The number of vocational education and training places offered for placement to the Federal Employment Agency dropped in 2006 by 12,000 or just under 3 per cent to 459,500. The number of reported training places dropped more sharply in western Germany (-3 %) than in eastern Germany (-1 %). In eastern Germany there was even a slight increase in company-based training places (+2 %), but it was exceeded by the decline in the number of extra-company training places (-7 %). In western Germany, on the other hand, there was a drop in both the number of company-based (just under -3%) and the number of extra-company training places (-14%).
Fewer company-based training places than in the previous year were recorded in three-fifths of the 176 Employment Agency districts in the country (Berlin is classified as one region here); the number increased in two-fifths of the regions. If the number of company-based training places reported is related to the number of applicants registered, it becomes apparent how different the basic regional conditions are for the placement work of the Federal Employment Agency.
In 16 of the 176 regions there were less than 30 company-based training places for 100 applicants. In another 58 regions there were only between 30 and 49 training places. On the other hand, there are regions where there are more company-based training places than registered applicants. The regions with an arithmetic surplus of training places, however, are exclusively large cities like Munich, Stuttgart, Frankfurt/Main, Düsseldorf and Münster. Moreover, some of these cities are subject to particularly strong migration pressure from people coming from outside in search of training places. The cities' "own kids" have to compete with these outsiders, so their placement prospects are not as good as the statistics suggest.
One cannot deduce directly from the annual trend in reported training places how the number of newly concluded apprenticeship contracts will change. For the companies are not obliged to inform the Federal Employment Agency of their training wishes any more than the young people are. In 2004, for example, 26,800 less training places were reported to the Federal Employment Agency, although the actual number of new apprenticeship contracts increased by 15,300.
A similar phenomenon is in the offing for this year. In their mid-term count of new training contracts concluded by the end of September the competent bodies in industry, commerce and the crafts reported a gain of 14,000 more contracts signed. The putative contradiction between the Federal Employment Agency's results and those of the agencies responsible for vocational training is resolved, however, if we examine the BA's vocational counselling statistics more closely. Thus the vocational counselling statistics also reported a slight increase of 3,700 in the number of apprenticeships started this year. Another striking fact is that there was a decrease (-17,000) in the number of company-based training places reported in the first half of the 2005/2006 placement year alone while in the second half there was a significant increase (+9,300). This corresponds quite well with the change in trend in socially insured employment. In May 2006 there was an increase over the previous month in such employment for the first time in a long time. The positive trend continued in the following months.
It would be wrong to relate the data on (voluntary) training place and applicant reports one-to-one to the training market.
However, a simple algorithm can be deduced from the vocational counselling statistics data with which the actual trend in newly concluded apprenticeship contracts can be traced quite well. Thus recent trends in the labour market together with rates of change in the numbers of training places and applicants registered with the BA also suggest an increase in new apprenticeship contracts signed this year.
It could even be somewhat higher than the positive interim findings of the bodies responsible for vocational education and training (+14,000) suggest. At this time, however, not all the new apprenticeship contracts have been reported to those responsible for vocational education and training. The provisional findings for industry, commerce and crafts refer only to the first three quarters of 2006, while in the analysis of the training market the fourth quarter of 2005 is considered as well. The final count will of course include as well the trend in contracts in the other fields of training, the liberal professions, agriculture, the civil service, home economics and ocean shipping, for which no provisional results are available at this time.
Exactly how many new apprenticeship contracts were signed between 01 October 2005 and 30 September 2006 will not be known for sure until December. That is when the BIBB in turn will have completed its survey of those responsible for vocational education and training concerning newly concluded apprenticeship contracts. It is not possible to draw a balance earlier than that because many apprenticeship contracts signed during the above period will only be registered with those responsible between the beginning of October and the end of November and cannot be counted before then. The period from 01 October of the previous year to 30 September of the survey year is consistently taken into consideration in the balance for the training market.
The number of applicants registered with the BA rose by 22,100 over the previous year to 763,100. Who are the young people who ask the BA for help choosing a career and finding an apprenticeship? The structure of attributes of registered applicants cannot be simply equated with the structure of all those interested in finding a training place. For in 2006 as well, about 200,000 young people found training places without being registered with the BA as applicants. High-performance youth are well represented among them. In the group of applicants registered with the BA, however, not only the especially high performers are slightly under-represented. The representation of young people with especially feeble training prerequisites is also below average. For the BA is obliged to carry only those counsel-seekers as training place applicants whose readiness for training and job-specific aptitude for the envisaged training courses has in principle been clarified. If that is not the case, although they will still be supported by the BA (and placed, for example, in courses with special pedagogic assistance), they are not given the official status of a "training place applicant".
This explains why only 5 per cent of the applicants registered with the BA have no secondary school qualifications (as is the case for more than 8 per cent of those released from schools of general education). The proportion of applicants with general secondary school certificate is 35 per cent. Forty-six per cent of the registered applicants have intermediate certificates, and 13 per cent are qualified for higher education.
There has been some speculation about whether the introduction of tuition fees in individual federal States might not have given young people with general qualifications for higher education greater motivation to forego university-level studies and instead apply for a training place. The number of registered applicants with qualifications for higher education has indeed increased sharply; the relative increment of 9.3 per cent substantially exceeds the rate for other applicants (+1.4 %). North Rhine-Westphalia in particular has announced an especially large increase in applicants with qualifications for higher education (+30.4 %), but as in many other federal States this is primarily due to a very sharp rise in the number of those specifically qualifying for technical college.
Though it seems likely that tuition fees might play a role, it is still not possible to draw definitive conclusions from the number of applicants alone. Taking all 16 federal States into account, we find that no substantial correlation can be detected between the introduction of tuition fees and the rate of change in the number of applicants qualifying for higher education. However, there are many people with university or college entrance qualifications looking for an apprenticeship without the help of the BA, and how their numbers have developed is still unclear. That being the case this subject will continue to merit heightened attention in the near future.
The sharp increase in the number of "old applicants" has already been discussed above: Approximately every second 2006 applicant had already left school in 2005 or even earlier.
An especially large proportion of "old applicants" (defined in these terms) was reported from the city states of Berlin and Hamburg, where the proportion is almost 70 per cent. The smallest proportions were in Baden-Wuerttemberg (46 %) and Bavaria (43 %). As the chart shows, the 16 federal States differ primarily in the proportions of school leavers from the previous year and earlier years.
The relative proportions of school leavers from the directly preceding year, on the other hand, vary very little and are between 20 and 25 per cent in most of the federal States
As special evaluations by the BA have shown as well, the proportion of "old applicants" is especially high among persons without secondary school qualifications (85 %) or with only a CSE (58 %). Above average rates are reported as well for applicants with non-German citizenship (56 %) and applicants with disabilities (84 %). These particularly high figures do not mean, however, that only relatively few old applicants are to be found in the other groups. Among the more high-performance school leavers with intermediate certificates as well, the proportion of "old applicants" was already quite large at 41 per cent, as was the proportion among the applicants qualified to commence higher education (49 %). Specifically in the case of those with higher education entrance qualifications, however, it should be borne in mind that they often do their military or alternative civilian service before applying, so they naturally cannot be counted among the current school leavers.
We do not know, however, whether young people from earlier school leaving years already took an interest in an apprenticeship at some earlier time. That has not up to now been one of the points surveyed in vocational counselling statistics. In the context of the BA/BIBB applicant polls carried out at irregular intervals, however, the "old applicants" can be more precisely defined so that the category is limited to those that have indeed applied at some time in the past for an earlier training start. The results of the last applicant poll, carried out at the end of 2004, were as follows:
Of the 763,100 applicants who were registered with the BA on 30 September 2006, 365,600 or 48 per cent ended up in apprenticeships. Above average success rates were reported particularly from Bavaria as well as increasingly from the eastern part of Germany.
Two factors are mainly responsible for the circumstance that despite the especially grave shortage of company apprenticeships in eastern Germany more applicants end up in vocational education and training places there (51 %) than in western Germany (47 %). The large number of extra-company training places is one factor. A total of 33,700 extra-company apprenticeships were made available in eastern Germany, three times as many as in western Germany (11,500).
A second factor is that young eastern Germans are traditionally especially mobile and often take up vocational education and training in the west. More precise data on the training commuters from eastern Germany is unfortunately not yet available at this time.
placed by 30 September: not in a vocational training place and not in an alternative destination (e.g. a vocational preparation measure).
More often than the average, applicants with an intermediate education certificate, "old applicants", applicants of Turkish nationality, persons with disabilities and eastern German applicants over 20 years of age are among those not yet placed. The situation was especially difficult for applicants of Turkish nationality from eastern Germany (who are mostly concentrated in the city of Berlin).
In contrast, there were relatively few unplaced applicants among those with university entrance qualifications, current year school leavers and young applicants from western Germany.
The subsequent placement process starts on the first of October for the 49,500 applicants not yet placed. The process does not rely only on the 15,400 training places not yet filled. The Federal Government has expanded the introductory company training for young people programme to 40,000 training places. In the coming months the BA will make 7,500 extra-company apprenticeships available primarily to young people from migration backgrounds. The federal States also have special programmes for taking care of unplaced applicants.
Despite the particularly difficult training market situation, the number of applicants not placed was relatively small (49,500, or 6.5 %) during the 2005/2006 review period, because 348,000 or 46 per cent of the registered applicants ended up in alternatives. Such alternatives include vocational preparation measures, introductory company training for young people, return to school, moving military or alternative community service forward, a volunteer social year, on-the-job training in enterprises and commencement of employment or a 400-euro job.
These alternatives are voluntarily chosen by the young people only in some of the cases; to a large extent they have to do with their past lack of success as applicants. For that reason these young people continue to want placement by the Federal Employment Agency, and accordingly the placement efforts are indeed continued for these young people.
The only legitimate reason why these young people are not counted among the applicants not yet placed is therefore that despite the lack of success of their applications they are not without prospects. In the worst case scenario, however, the prospect could be an annoying wait loop or the mere chance of a 400-euro transitional job. The proportion of young people left with alternatives has risen sharply in the last few years.
By deciding to do something else instead of beginning an apprenticeship, these young people make a substantial contribution to easing the tense market situation. But when all is said and done, how satisfied are the young people with this step?
According to the results of the last poll of applicants carried out by the BA/BIBB at the end of 2004, it can be said of only just under a third of the applicants left with alternatives at the most that their alternative destination largely corresponds to their career wishes. For example, an applicant with university and college entrance qualifications registered with the BA who voluntarily opts for university studies after all is an exceptional case. Another third did not want to end up where they now are but have resigned themselves to the present situation. This applies in particular in the case of vocational preparation measures, on-the-job training, and military or alternative community service. The remaining third, on the other hand, see themselves as being in an "emergency situation". A relatively large number of them are in rather precarious situations, such as joblessness (since they have had no success in finding a job as yet), casual work or other undesirable "second or third class" positions.
This year's results for the BA's vocational guidance statistics show once again that the dual system of vocational education and training absolutely depends on a functioning employment system. Thus there is a strong correlation between the number of company-based training places offered in a region and the general employment situation locally. Accordingly, in Employment Agency districts with a high rate of unemployment one has to resign oneself to a substantial shortage of company-based apprenticeships as well
One way the federal and State governments and the Federal Employment Agency respond to this situation is by making available a greater number of extra-company training places (the bulk of them publicly financed). How well-targeted their efforts are is shown in the above table: Missing company-based apprenticeships are compensated for by providing an average of about 50 training places for every 100 school leavers in all regions, be they company-based or extra-company training places. This succeeds in keeping the number of applicants not yet placed relatively low in all regions. These results, however, cannot conceal the fact that the main reason the group of applicants not yet officially placed is still relatively small is that unsuccessful young people are increasingly ending up in alternatives.
In its business operations the BA has processed incoming business data on the training place market immediately upon receipt with new information technology. When Social Security Code II was introduced, the foundations of the statistics on training place placement in Germany changed as well. Details on the BA's vocational counselling statistics can be found ( in German) here.
Special notice should be given here to a book published in October 2006 that deals in detail with the situation of the registered applicants for training places:
Publication on the Internet: October 23, 2006
URN: urn:nbn:de:0035-0184-3
Deutsche Nationalbibliothek has archived the electronic publication "Ambivalent Placement Report of the Federal Employment Agency", which is now permanently available on the archive server of Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
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Last modified on: November 29, 2011
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