The automotive industry and shipbuilding had problems even before Corona. Now the crisis is also striking.
Image: dpa
The crisis accelerates structural change in industry. Even academics are suddenly left without a job. The story of two young engineers who believed they had embarked on a crisis-proof career.
Selim Aouini is only 33 years old, but he has already buried his greatest dream of student days: “I studied mechanical engineering at the University of Hanover,” he reports. “I wanted to do research for a while, but above all to pursue a career in the auto industry. It seemed to me to be a completely safe industry at the time. ”Meanwhile, Aouini is married, has a young daughter and has finished his time in the auto industry. On November 1st, after the bankruptcy of his previous employer, he started as a sales manager in the medium-sized intralogistics company Viastore Systems. “I never would have thought before that I would end up outside the auto industry,” he says.
Nadine Bad
Editor in business, responsible for “Job and Opportunity”.
Like Selim Aouini, there are more and more well-educated professionals. Because the German economy is in the middle of a profound structural change due to digitization and greening, which is being accelerated by the Corona crisis. “This is a pattern that we have already seen in previous recessions,” says Enzo Weber from the Institute for Employment Research (IAB). Although such a technological-structural change is often continuous, in a recession it “suddenly becomes very violent in the labor market”. While in earlier economic crises it was mainly the low-skilled who became unemployed due to the automation of factory work, the current transformation may affect the middle level, i.e. skilled workers: Their jobs will probably not be created in the same form again after the recession.