Continuning training providers and demographic change
The 2011 Continuing Training Monitor asked continuing training providers about the extent to which they had recorded a change in participation over the past five years by groups of persons considered to form part of the skills reserves. In order to identify regional differences, three regional classes were formed on the basis of context data relating to population development (cf. Figure 1).1 The class of shrinking regions in which economic power is comparatively low (coloured dark blue in Figure 1) covers large areas of the federal states of the former East Germany with the exception of the metropolitan areas of Berlin/Potsdam, Dresden and Leipzig as well as stretching across central Germany as far as the eastern Ruhr and containing the Saarland, another area affected by post-industrial structural change. It also includes peripheral rural regions in northern Bavaria. Constant population development is recorded in wide areas of South Germany and in the North West in particular (medium blue). Regions experiencing population growth include economically strong metropolitan areas such as the axis extending from Munich to Nuremberg, Hamburg and its hinterland, the Cologne/Bonn region, Potsdam and surrounding area and the far South West (light blue).
The following presentation of results only accords consideration to regions where population is declining or increasing. As Figure 2 makes clear, only providers in regions with population growth are recording significant increases in participants (net total >=20) across all groups of persons. Unemployed skilled workers, who in many cases, however, are likely to find their way back into employment even if they do not undergo continuing training, constitute an exception in this regard. The highest levels of growth can be shown to occur amongst migrants who, in line with the greater potential they display in terms of number of persons, are especially being mobilised in regions of economic prosperity.
A change of trend has clearly taken place with regard to the continuing training participation of older workers. Providers are recording a significant increase in the involvement of such employees both in regions where population is growing and declining. The reason why even more providers are recording this development in regions where population is falling is likely to be the accelerated rise in the number of older workers as a proportion of the population. In regions where population is falling, a stronger increase in participation in continuing training is otherwise only discernable amongst low skilled unemployed persons. In the case of unemployed skilled workers, providers even report a significant reduction which is clearly taking place in the wake of a decrease in funding from the Employment Agencies. This shows that, irrespective of the prevailing structural circumstances regionally, low skilled unemployed persons are increasingly becoming the focus of labour market oriented continuing training support.2
By way of contrast, greater numbers of low skilled persons in employment, at whom many funding instruments at both federal Government and federal state level such as the continuing education grant are aimed, could only be recruited for continuing training in regions where there was growth.
