Germany: Study warns public service of shortage of skilled workers

The auditing company PwC has warned of a massive shortage of skilled workers in the public sector.

Frankfurt am Main - the federal, state and local governments will be short of around one million skilled workers in 2030, reports Der Spiegel, citing a report that PwC is to present next week. It is "a completely new dimension, with a massive impact on the common good and services of general interest," the magazine quoted from the letter. "It's about nothing less than the question of whether the public sector can still fulfill its core tasks in the future," Volker Halsch, one of the study authors and former State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Finance, told the magazine.

The PwC experts propose ten measures with which the state can remedy the dramatic shortage. They include a more flexible transition into retirement. Targeted incentives should be used to get employees in the public sector to work beyond the age limit.

In addition, public employers should open themselves specifically to skilled workers from abroad. There are few problems with EU citizens because they are allowed to work in Germany, but refugees should also be increasingly recruited. In addition, the state could also recruit lateral entrants to a greater extent than before.

This contributes to "bringing relevant professional experience and expert knowledge into the public sector," it says. Exchange programs with companies, in the context of which economic specialists are employed on a temporary basis in the public sector, would have similar effects. In addition, according to PwC, the state should massively promote digitization.

This makes the public service more productive and requires fewer staff. In addition, politics could strengthen voluntary service. The auditors expect that the staff shortage can be significantly alleviated with the measures they have proposed. Depending on the determination with which they were implemented, there would still be a shortage of between 160,000 and half a million skilled workers. In order to further close the gap, PwC suggests that the state could also outsource parts of its tasks to external service providers, such as the operation of IT networks or the management of real estate.

Source: Der Newsticker

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