Missing those who “keep life going”

In 2022, the German labor market saw a strong increase in jobs in some areas. For example, the demand for warehouse workers and warehouse logistics specialists has skyrocketed by 195 percent. Commercial employees and social pedagogues were sought almost two-thirds more often than in the previous year. An increase of 55 percent was recorded for nursing staff and 54 percent for mechatronics technicians. The number of advertised sales positions increased by 52 percent compared to the previous year. This data comes from an evaluation of the recruiting platform StepStone, which is exclusively available to WELT.

The reason: despite the crisis, many companies are desperately looking for staff. The number of vacancies is close to two million. Tobias Zimmermann, job market expert at StepStone, calls the ubiquitous lack of staff “unemployment”. The detailed evaluation of job offers on the platform (belongs to Axel Springer like WELT) shows how severe the bottlenecks are now in occupations that are not traditionally associated with a shortage of skilled workers.

In the meantime, employees are being sought in every area, says Zimmermann. "In the past few months we have seen one thing very clearly: Unemployment has reached the German labor market."

This is no longer limited to very specialized profiles such as IT experts or software developers. "Employees who keep everyday life running are in high demand." In some areas, the corona pandemic acted as an additional catalyst. "People in logistics are in greater demand than ever before, and the demand for nursing staff is also continuing," says Zimmermann, "and it will stay that way."

This selective job creation is also reflected in the current statistics of the Federal Employment Agency (BA). Employment subject to social security contributions has risen significantly: in a year-on-year comparison from June 2021 to June 2022 by 643,000 to 34.45 million. It is thus 1.04 million above the value from the corresponding month in the pre-Corona year June 2019. Total employment now amounts to 45.57 million on an annual average for 2022 and thus increased by 589,000.

"Despite the crisis, the risk of becoming unemployed in the long term is rather low," says Enzo Weber, head of the research area "Forecasts and macroeconomic analyses" at the Institute for Labor Market and Occupational Research (IAB), compared to WELT. "The reason is the continued high demand for labour."

In other words: anyone who loses their job or resigns will find a new job more quickly than in previous years. "The labor market policy debate has turned around," says Employer President Rainer Dulger on this development. "The current challenges are no longer unemployment, but a shortage of skilled workers and workers as well as skills adjustments for employees."

The fact that the risk of ending up in long-term unemployment is decreasing is also shown by the so-called entry risk – i.e. the risk of becoming unemployed in the next month from employment. It relates the unemployment reports of employees who were previously subject to social security contributions to the number of employees in the previous month.

According to this, on average for the year 2022, according to preliminary information, a monthly average of 0.51 percent of employees subject to social security contributions reported unemployment. This is the lowest annual level since 2008, the first year this value was recorded. For comparison: In the annual average of 2019, the rate was just under 0.65 percent and in 2008 it was 0.83 percent.

It also shows that the unemployed are not a static group. Rather, there are mass departures and additions - albeit with a downward trend over the years. In the crisis year 2020 alone, there were 6.45 million people entering unemployment and 5.97 million leaving.

The average for the years 2010 to 2019 was 7.78 million arrivals and 7.88 million departures per year. There has been a slight increase in newcomers in recent months. According to the BA, this is mainly due to Ukrainian refugees.

In view of the crisis, the labor market is stable, says Federal Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD). This is "thanks to the great commitment of German companies, but also to the comprehensive crisis management of the federal government," says Heil. Around 2.45 million people were unemployed in December. This means that unemployment rose by almost 20,000 people compared to November for seasonal reasons. The unemployment rate rose by 0.1 percentage points to 5.4 percent.

Compared to December 2021, however, the number of unemployed rose by 124,000. According to the ministry, this is due to the registration of refugees from Ukraine in the job centers. Without them, unemployment would be below last year's level.

In December, 184,863 Ukrainian nationals were registered as unemployed, around 177,000 more than before the start of the war. However, these numbers have been declining since September, when they peaked at 204,782. This means that the number of refugees who find work is increasing.

There is something else that ensures the stable quotas: The number of people on short-time work has fallen sharply on average over the year - but as a result of the crisis there was a significant increase again in the second half of the year. In particular, the energy-intensive industries such as the automotive and chemical industries are showing strong growth, as WELT recently reported.

According to initial estimates from the BA statistics, the annual average number of short-time workers in 2022 was around 430,000, after an average of 1.85 million people in 2021 and 2.94 million in 2020. Andrea Nahles, head of the BA, had in view of the recent increase A simplified mechanism tends to be required - because the processing ties up too many personnel and thus causes high costs. Employer President Dulger also calls for a "debureaucratization".

According to economists, whether the development will continue in 2023 depends primarily on the external circumstances, such as energy prices and the disrupted supply chains. In the most recent annual forecast, the IAB expected a slight increase in the unemployment rate of 0.1 percent - at the same time an increase in employment of 0.9 percent is to be expected due to the high demand for labour.

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