Apologies to Running Wolf and Jerry, you know what the headline biz is like.
Germany is running out of manual laborers and non-college workers!
The country is also running out of Germans, out of internet, and social cohesion, but we'll do these later.
About a year ago, the media reported that decades of scarcity in vocational training openings definitely were a thing of the past. Even kids with average grades have choices these days, triumphed the press.
More openings than applicants is a situation the main association of employers hates.
The association has one clear culprit: more Germans than ever go to college instead of the typically three year vocational training.
Because this is a toxic argument, we'll tell you why the association got it all wrong. Apparently even a three year course in barking up trees does not prevent you from going for the wrong kind of arbor.
First and foremost, this association is responsible for ever higher schooling requirements for the vocational sector.
It used to be that 8 years of school were enough for virtually all jobs in the sector. A few required 10 years, none required what Americans know as high school (12 or 13 years).
With a shortage of places and more technical complexity, the employers pushed up the schooling requirement, the states scrapped the 8 year basic and made it 9 years. These days, a 9 year degree will likely land you in a "remedial program" because you are not considered fit for the real vocational training.
The plum jobs are for the 12 year graduates, and the 10 year students still have some opportunities.
Better educated youngsters for the same price as the previous 8 year grads and an unlimited supply of eager workers -- it worked out so well for the employers that warnings about the effect of a lower birth rate fell on deaf ears.
As the situation tightened, Germany finally reduced some of career barriers that had developed under the strictly separated education system. If you quit school as an 8 year graduate, there was very little chance of ever going to college. You were in a box, and you stayed there.
In other countries, we would call this a caste system.
Anyway, nowadays your 10 year school plus vocational training allows you to go to college, so who says you cannot change a calcified system?
Which does not change the basic numbers: more vocational sector openings than candidates.
Employers have gone from a glut of resumes to - behold - actually having to read them and to reach out to young people.
In the seriously patriarchical and testosterone fuelled manual labor field, the need to convince young people to join your company is often seen as an insult. So, you need something to blame it on.
Make that college.
Why are we sending all these kids to college, which is still free at state schools, mind you. We, the backbone of German industry and society struggle. The government needs to stop giving free college education to kids who can afford to pay their own way.
Seriously?
The "guild" system, with some tough never mentioned legal support by the Nazis, does produce handymen that are the envy of other countries. But...
But it is so inflexible. Why in the world should my barber have to do three years of barbing before being let loose on my hair?
If I want to talk astrophysics with the barber, guess what, my American front porch barber in the ghetto was more fun in the astrophysics department than my German pro barber.
Supply and demand works both ways. After hundreds of years of "shut up and work", German kids finally have a choice.
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