While the mantra remains that Germany needs to import millions to fill “job roles,” the reality is that there are fewer job opportunities for the unemployed than ever before, according to Federal Employment Agency head Andrea Nahles.
She said the labor market has been “stagnant for months,” and “no momentum is coming in,” said Nahles in a Web.de interview.
Notably, the number of vacancies has decreased for seven consecutive quarters, showing signs of a labor market consistently cooling.
“We have an indicator that shows how likely unemployed people are to find a job again. The value is usually around seven, but now at 5.7 – the lowest it has ever been,” she said.
Notably, job losses are being felt across the spectrum, and nobody is “immune” from being hit.
“But the well-educated still have the best opportunities in the job market,“ said Nahles.
Notably, those at the entry-level are facing among the worst prospects. “We have had fewer young people placed in training than we have in 25 years,” she said.
Nahles also pointed to a new reform of the citizen’s benefit, which is the term used for German social welfare, that would give priority for job placements to the unemployed. However, Nahles said that the unemployed do not always have the skills that employers are searching for.
“The citizen’s income discussion must not ignore the labor market,” she said. “Qualification remains important, otherwise people will be back at the job center after three months.”
In August, Germany announced that there are now more than 3 million people without a job, a record that was last achieved in 2015.
However, unlike 2015, artificial intelligence is now a factor, with German firms looking to increasingly replace labor inputs with computers, robotics and automation. While economic rebounds may come and go, AI is set to be here for the long term, and experts predict more and more jobs will be replaced by the technology.
Immigration could actually worsen the situation. While there are certain high-skilled jobs that economists claim can only be performed by immigrants, China has bucked this trend, as Remix News has noted, pulling ahead of Europe in terms of manufacturing and innovation in a number of key areas, including clean energy, automobile production, and other industries, all without mass immigration.
However, Nahles remains sanguine on artificial intelligence.
“Sure, (artificial intelligence) will shake up some industries quite a bit. Activities will change. This causes stress for people, I understand that. But the forecasts of our scientists at the IAB (Institute for Labour Market and Occupational Research of the Federal Employment Agency; is that AI will create even more new jobs than it will eliminate. It is a transformation, with all the opportunities and risks,” she said.
However, top firms such as Goldman Sachs estimate that 300 million jobs will be lost in the developed world due to artificial intelligence. Automating driving, which is already happening in the United States, could cost millions of jobs, with many of those jobs held by unskilled males.
