Print version Recommend this page Press release
34/ 2010
Bonn, 05.08.2010
The labour market of the future: labour demand and supply until 2025
New model calculations by the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB) and the Institute for Employment Research (IAB)
How large could the future demand for labour be within certain occupational fields, and how high is supply likely to be? The Bonn-based Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB) and the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) in Nuremberg have now joined forces to publish model calculations on the development of the labour market until the year 2025 in book form under the title of "Occupations and qualification in the future".
This study breaks new ground in methodological terms by the way in which it traces the routes between occupations learned and occupations exercised (occupational flexibility). Longer-term occupational field and qualifications developments can now be displayed in a more differentiated manner. This enables attention to be drawn at an early stage to the action required to facilitate greater matching accuracy of supply and demand on the labour market. The projections show such as aspects as the areas in which a considerable shortage of skilled workers may occur and which skills levels will be under particular threat from unemployment.
The model calculation presented forms part of a longer term cooperation agreement between BIBB and the IAB with regard to occupational and qualifications projections.
There is a danger of a significant bottleneck in the case of skilled workers at the medium qualification in particular. Although demand for staff will remain at virtually the same level until 2025, a slow decrease in the working population with the relevant skills will set in from 2015 onwards This is a development which will subsequently gather pace. In addition to this, a rising number of skilled workers will leave working life from the year 2020. This could result in an overall shortage of around 1.8 million workers by 2025.
The BIBB and IAB projections show that both demand for and supply of workers without vocational qualifications will decline by 2025. Despite this development, this group of persons will find it increasingly difficult to obtain employment even given the fact that their numbers are falling in overall terms.
"This is an area where second-chance qualifications are required on a massive scale if we are to secure the long-term future of Germany as an economic location by countering the simultaneous threats of skilled worker shortage and unemployment", says Prof. Dr. Reinhold Weiß, BIBB's Deputy President and Director of Research.
IAB Deputy Director Prof. Dr. Ulrich Walwei stresses that vocational and higher education qualifications systems will need to become more permeable in future. "These two systems have been too mutually exclusive in the past. This is an area where a wide range of potential remains untapped, and there is no way in which we can continue to afford to allow this to go to waste in future."
Bottlenecks at the occupational field level are becoming discernable at an even earlier stage and in an even more sustained way. The vocational and labour market researchers Dr. Robert Helmrich (BIBB) and Dr. Gerd Zika (IAB), who are the authors of the study, state that: "The worsening shortage in trained skilled workers will become apparent at a very early stage in healthcare and social occupations as well as in legal, management and business administration jobs. Bottlenecks will also emerge in so-called "MINT" occupations (a German acronym for "Mathematics, Information Technology, Science and Technology) due to the fact that there continues to be considerable demand for such workers on the labour market."
The projection also predicts a shortage of labour in such areas as traffic, transport, security and security guards and the hotel and restaurant trade, although these occupational fields largely recruit staff from workers who have not trained in the relevant occupation.
The developments shown in the model calculations conducted by BIBB and the IAB will not inevitably occur in the form stated due to the fact that both companies and job seekers have a wide range of opportunities to react to the situation. Notwithstanding this, the main aim of the analyses is to indicate the areas in which bottlenecks are currently expected to occur and to show where problems of balancing supply and demand are anticipated.
Points of contact:
- Dr. Robert Helmrich (BIBB), Tel.: 0228/107-1132
- Dr. Gerd Zika (IAB), Tel.: 0911/179-3072
Further (German language) information is available on the BIBB website at www.qube-projekt.de
The German language publication "Beruf und Qualifikation in der Zukunft. BIBB-IAB-Modellrechnungen zu den Entwicklungen in Berufsfeldern und Qualifikationen bis 2025" [Occupations and qualification in the future. BIBB-IAB model calculations on the development of the labour market until the year 2025] has been published in the BIBB "Berichte zur beruflichen Bildung" ["Vocational Training Reports"] series (ISBN 978-3-7639-1137-0).
It is available at the price of €27.90 by contacting the publishers
W. Bertelsmann Verlag (wbv) in Bielefeld at service@wbv.de .
Reprint free of charge - voucher copy requested.
