Compared to qualified workers, unskilled labour are significantly more often found working in menial and thus usually also more precarious jobs. Moreover, their gainful employment is concentrated on a few occupational fields only. These are the results of an analysis prepared by the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB) regarding the situation of unskilled or, respectively, insufficiently qualified labour.
The evaluation reveals that the employment situation of unskilled labour is aggravated even more by on-going job cuts in fields that are their only hope for finding employment. For this reason, their risk of unemployment is about three times greater than that of people with completed vocational training. According to BIBB President Friedrich Hubert Esser, this scenario will not fundamentally change even given the current demographic development. "In demand are qualified specialists, who are able to fulfil the requirements of the job in question. The risk of unskilled labour not being able to find access to the labour market also in the future remains considerable."
Given the data from the 2007 micro census, some 5.3 million people are considered "formally not qualified" - about half of these men (50.8 %) and the other half women (49.2 %). Three of four unskilled workers have either a Certificate of Secondary Education (CSE) or a General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE), some 12 % have a university entrance qualification and about every sixth has no school leaving certificate at all. Unskilled labour include 2.2 million young people of 20 to 34 years of age, of which 1.2 million had employment.
Compared to young people with full vocational qualification, unskilled young gainfully employed persons find jobs only in a few select fields of industry: The hotel and restaurant industry (11.5 %), public health service, veterinary services and social services (11.2 %), retail (10.8 %), in the "provision of services of general economic interest" (9.8 %) or in the building and construction industry (5.5 %). The high rate of unskilled labour (17.7 %) in these fields of industry is quite conspicuous, whereas the rate of skilled labour in this field is only at 5.4 % by comparison.
According to the words of BIBB President Esser, in order to safeguard the future demand for skilled labour, the percentage of unskilled workers in the overall working population needs to be effectively lowered. "About every seventh gainfully employed person has no vocational qualification. Here, considerable potential remains undeveloped and needs to be promoted. Qualifying this target group is the big challenge for the vocational training and continuing education industry." He added that it was important to improve assessment of those competences unskilled workers already had or had obtained informally and to use these as a basis for systematic qualification.
"Given the existing diversity of this target group, flexible qualification propositions are called for, allowing for low threshold access and which can culminate in a recognised occupational qualification", Esser continued. Providers of education and enterprises were to increase their commitment in this field in the future. What was called for, he said, are qualification concepts "from bottom to top". That way, hitherto unskilled gainfully employed persons would be enabled to climb up to become skilled workers by way of appropriate measures of vocational training and continuing education under as near-service conditions as possible, and thus ultimately relieve the strain on the skilled labour market.