In the skilled trades, more apprenticeships have been filled in recent weeks following difficulties in the corona crisis – but gaps remain.
"If all those involved in vocational education and training now put in a real final spurt, we can succeed in ensuring that 2020 will not be a lost corona training year," said hans peter wollseifer, president of the skilled trades, to the german press agency. Thanks to a race to catch up, it has been possible to significantly reduce the difference in newly concluded training contracts compared to the previous year, which was still large in the spring of this year.
At the end of october, more than 17.000 apprenticeship places available in the craft sector. From january to october, around 131.000 new training contracts. Compared to the same month last year, this was a drop of 7.3 percent – but the gap was significantly smaller than in the summer.
"Even if we probably won’t be able to quite reach the previous year’s level, we will almost certainly do better than during the financial crisis, when the minus in new training contracts at the end of the year was around 7 percent", says wollseifer. "We now have two more months to get young people into the skilled trades."Training remains high on the agenda of companies even during the pandemic. "They know that the young people who are not being trained now will not be available as qualified specialists in the future."Even after the official start of the training year, there were still no applicants on 1 january. December, or even after that, continued to start training.
The federal government had set financial incentives. Companies that continue to provide training during the crisis or even increase the number of apprenticeships receive a bonus.
According to the central association of the german skilled trades, the volume of applications submitted so far with a claim is at a low, albeit slightly increasing level. Concrete data to be published by the federal employment agency at the end of november. The low number of applications was probably due to "restrictive requirements".
The corona pandemic has had a significant impact on the situation on the training market this year. Vocational orientation was much more difficult, so training fairs and other events were cancelled.
As the federal employment agency announced at the end of october, the employment agencies and job centers received a total of 530 new trainees between october 2019 and september 2020.000 apprenticeships reported – 41.700 less than a year earlier. 473 people had signed up.000 applicants turned to the employment agencies – 38.000 less than in the previous year. A total of 29.000 applicants unsupplied, but still 60.000 apprenticeships open.
The head of the federal agency, detlef scheele, had called on companies to make apprenticeships available. "The issue is the need for specialists, the pandemic will pass," said scheele: "if you don’t train, you won’t have any employees."