Frankfurt am Main – The defective investments of companies and politics in the future of industry in Germany in particular are felt young people: in 2024, a total of 2500 young people were less able to sign one training contract than in the previous year. Cross -sectors and nationwide, there were again more unversanded young people who were looking for the employment agencies for the first time in 2024 as open training positions.
In the professions that are important to them, the industrial union even records 3,600 fewer new trainees. For comparison: in 2019, 10,000 more young people received an apprenticeship contract than today. This is the result of the study “Training Balance 2024” by IG Metall.
Low or no training is “economic suicide”
IG Metall board member Hans-Jürgen Urban warns of negative development: “We are experiencing a dangerous mix of blocked industrial policy and a lack of strategic foresight in the companies. The training market remains at a low level. Companies do not invest enough in themselves and too little in the specialists of the future. When companies train fewer young people or nobody at all, the economic suicide is. And they deprive the young people of their professional perspectives. A frustrated young generation also provokes a poor industrial policy. ”
In the professional area of IG Metall, the number of new training contracts in the IT professions (minus 1600) and merchants and logistics (minus 2500), metal and electrical levels and construction professions stagnated. Positive developments are still available in craft professions (+ 612).
Companies need product and personnel strategy
Urban: “The companies have to develop an active product and personnel strategy. Politicians have to accompany this through an active industrial policy for the location. ”The IG Metall board demands from the next federal government to have guaranteed access to initial qualifying initial training for young people.
IG Metall criticizes that the vast majority of companies are too little commitment: only 19 percent of all companies are still training, so four fifths do not. At the same time, the number of trainees in the companies will drop in the total number of all employees: Currently, only 4 trainees come up to 100 employees in the IG Metall industries. In 2019 there were still 5 trainees each.
Note: You can find the “Training Balance 2024” of IG Metall for download here.