VDI: Skills shortage threatens transformation to sustainable industry

According to the latest VDI/IW Engineer Monitor, the number of vacancies for engineers remains at a high level. The so-called bottleneck index is particularly high for professions that are important for climate and digitalization issues. There are currently a total of 159,100 vacancies in Germany. If you relate the number of vacancies to the number of unemployed people, you get the bottleneck index in engineering and IT professions. In the fourth quarter of 2023, the bottleneck ratio is 380 vacancies per 100 unemployed people - a significant bottleneck. The biggest bottlenecks are in the engineering professions of energy and electrical engineering (bottleneck ratio 615) and construction/surveying/building services engineering and architecture (485). In third place are the engineering professions of mechanical and automotive engineering (392), followed by computer science (380). These four occupational categories are particularly important for digitalization and climate protection. "Around 29% of the companies we surveyed from November 2023 to January 2024 stated that a lack of skilled workers is an obstacle to better positioning their own company with regard to climate protection and the energy transition," says Prof. Dr. Axel Plünnecke from the IW in Cologne. The significance of a lack of skilled workers ranges from around 19 percent for business-related service providers to around 75 percent in the "energy and water supply, waste disposal" industry group. Among companies with 250 employees or more, 70 percent expect an increase in demand for IT specialists over the next five years and 59 percent expect an increase in demand for engineers specifically for the development of climate-friendly technologies and products. Progress in the employment of older people, women, immigrants and university graduates has enabled employment in engineering and IT professions to grow from 968,700 to 1,483,300 between the end of 2012 and September 2023. The authors of the long-term study fear that the necessary further employment growth in the engineering and IT professions will stop due to demographics and falling numbers of graduates without further measures to secure skilled workers and that employment will stagnate at today's level until 2035. Around 200,000 additional employees in engineering and IT professions could be gained by 2035 if educational performance and university graduate numbers do not fall as is feared. This could generate over 24 billion euros in additional annual added value.

"What is particularly problematic for the success of the transformation in climate protection is that the number of first-year university students in engineering and computer science has decreased," says Willig. The number fell from 143,400 in the 2016 academic year to 128,400 in the 2023 academic year, a decrease of 10.5 percent - among German students, the number even fell by 23.2 percent. "In order to reduce this shortage of skilled workers, we need to implement a whole package of measures. On the one hand, we need to attract more young people to study engineering. On the other hand, we also need, for example, qualified immigration, voluntary offers of longer working hours for older people, investment in education and concrete steps on how we can improve the framework conditions for girls and young women in order to convince them of STEM and engineering professions," he continues. "If we want to remain a world leader as an industrialized nation, we also need more skilled workers from abroad who are given an easy start, otherwise the transformation to a climate-friendly industry will not fail due to our ideas or investments, but due to a lack of personnel." More immigrants can be recruited if the opportunities offered by the new Skilled Immigration Act can be better utilized through faster bureaucratic processes. "It's good that the new Skilled Immigration Act is now in place. We now need to apply it properly and offer foreign engineers a quick and unbureaucratic path," Adrian Willig points out. "Furthermore, more capacity at universities for international students and programs to support students from abroad can help to attract more immigrants to the engineering and IT professions via universities," adds Axel Plünnecke from the IW. With its new XPand project, the VDI is committed to making it easier for immigrant engineers to integrate into the job market. Through a targeted mentoring program, foreign specialists are supported and find a professional and social home. "We teach technical education from an early age through our VDIni clubs. We continue with the Future Pilots network for young people and the VDI Young Engineers, in which 15,000 students are involved on a voluntary basis," says Adrian Willig.