Print version Recommend this page Press release
08/ 2009
Bonn, 26.02.2009
BIBB's President Kremer: Aim of 100,000 additional training places can be reached only with increased effort
BIBB Training Bonus Survey: Firms responding guardedly
The training bonus was created to improve the chances of unplaced applicants from previous years of being quickly integrated into the training place market. Only some 2% of the firms providing in-company vocational training in Germany have used this bonus to date to create additional training places for unplaced applicants from previous years. This is the conclusion of a representative survey of more than 1,000 enterprises conducted by the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB). The analyses from the BIBB Training Monitor survey are now available in the latest issue (1/2009) of the BIBB journal "Berufsbildung in Wissenschaft und Praxis - BWP". Since the summer of 2008, firms that create additional training places for youths who are in need of assistance have been able to apply for a subsidy of € 4,000 to € 6,000 per youth. The Federal Employment Agency has allocated a total of € 450 million up to the year 2010 for this.
"The introduction of the training bonus," BIBB president Manfred Kremer noted, "has been slow to date. We will have to beat the drum much more loudly for it if the goal of placing 100,000 unplaced applicants from previous years is to be achieved by the year 2010." Manfred Kremer appealed to trade unions, employers, chamber associations and chambers on the ground to be more active in supporting local employment agencies in this undertaking. He called upon firms to make use of the training bonus during the current economic crisis - and in view of the demographic trend toward declining numbers of applicants - as an opportunity to counteract the impending shortage of skilled workers. "Unplaced applicants from previous years have earned this chance because, all in all, their past academic performance is no worse that that of other applicants."
Two per cent of the enterprises that BIBB surveyed in the autumn of 2008 had submitted an application to the Federal Employment Agency for subsidisation of their supplementary training places for unplaced applicants from previous years. A further 2.6% did not yet want to make a final decision at the time of the survey. The findings from the BIBB Training Monitor survey indicate that the increase in the number of in-company training places totalled an average of one training place per firm submitting an application. According to the Federal Ministry of Labour, a total of 11,584 applications for a training bonus have been approved since the summer of 2008 (as of 29 January 2009). This translates into just under 2% of all new training contracts.
Based on the BIBB survey, businesses in the crafts and skilled trades which had created additional training places for unplaced applicants from previous years up to October 2008 showed an above-average interest in the training bonus. The potential for further applications is also greatest here. Interest was particularly high among firms in the construction sector, producer goods industry and the agriculture and forestry sector and somewhat less among companies in the transport, storage and communication sector.
Another aim of the training bonus is to persuade firms that do not provide vocational training to do so. The BIBB survey shows however that the training bonus has been used almost exclusively to date by firms that already provide vocational training and that could imagine expanding the number of training places they offer. The expectation that a particularly large number of firms in Germany's eastern states would take advantage of this opportunity to create additional training places has also remained unfulfilled.
Manfred Kremer: "The BIBB survey thus also provides information about the types of firms where it would be worth making the training bonus better known on a targeted basis with an eye to substantially reducing the number of unplaced applicants from previous years who still do not have a training place."
The BIBB Training Monitory is a representative, internet-based panel survey of those persons in charge of personnel or vocational training in firms that provide in-company vocational training and in firms that do not provide such training. BIBB has conducted this survey on a regular basis since 2007 in order to be able to observe and analyse trends on the vocational training place market without a large time lag.
Further information is available in German at http://www.bwp-zeitschrift.de/
The article "Ausbildungsbonus: Ausschöpfung des betrieblichen Ausbildungsstellenpotenzials für Altbewerber/-innen?" from Issue 1/2009 of BWP is available at www.bibb.de/bwp/ausbildungsbonus
