If German companies could ensure the supply of skilled labor, they could generate an additional 49 billion euros ($52 billion) worth of goods and services in 2024, according to a recent study.
The paper released by the Cologne Institute for Economic Research (IW) said the addition of some 573,000 qualified workers would raise production potential by about 1.1 percentage points in the current year.
The two authors calculated that by 2027, the added value could total as much as 74 billion euros, using extrapolations to determine the skilled labor gap.
Unlike the actual production result, the production potential is an estimate of the production that would be possible at full capacity.
The IW economists noted the conservative nature of their calculation, which assumes that every suitably qualified unemployed person in Germany finds a job.
This is not the case in reality, and "the actual costs of the shortage of skilled labor are likely to be significantly higher," said the authors, who are similarly cautious in their calculations elsewhere.
In any case, the gap has grown significantly since 2010.
According to the IW experts, the key lever for reducing the shortage of skilled labor is more qualified immigration. Here, Germany's recently revised Skilled Labor Immigration Act has created new opportunities, they wrote.
Additional childcare facilities would help to get more women into work, as would changes to the taxation of married couples. Making it easier to employ older people would also have a positive effect, the paper says.
