by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Despite this shortage of workers, however, Germany, like Britain and other countries, has a serious problem with unemployment.
How, how does that add up?
There are only one or two reason that can explain this apparent paradox and neither of them is really a nice palatable one.
The first one will have to be, despite good schools and good vocational guidance in general, including apprenticeships, etc., a lack of (marketable) skills. That is, however, something that can be overcome by training and it is down to the individuals to take steps to overcome that.
The second point will have to be, and I really hate to suggest this, and this is the point where there will be some folks saying that I am attacking the poor and the unemployed, but I must say it and that is that there are far too many lazy people who just cannot be bothered and who seem to be proud of living off the state.
There seem to be a fair number of people who have to be no greater ambition in life, which in the last years of school, than to become “Harzers”, as they would be referred to in Germany now, with reference to the Harz IV law, and to live of unemployment benefits and welfare (like their parents) and others in the surroundings.
Both of those types can be found in Germany as much as and especially in Britain. Lack of skills, as I have said, can be overcome, by training and learning and by self-motivation, in formal and informal ways. Laziness and “lack of ambition” other than a life of dole and crime is not so easily overcome and this applies to everywhere yet again. A good kick up the backside is what many do require to get going.
So, Germany, like Britain, must import skilled workers from abroad, only for Neo-Nazis, there and here then to go up against those foreigners claiming that those “foreign workers” take away jobs from indigenous people. You cannot take jobs away from people who don't want them, are not prepared to take them or are not qualified enough to get them and who are, often, also are not prepared to get the necessary qualifications in order to get such jobs.
There is not so much a shortage of jobs, at least not, as it would appear, in Germany, but a shortage of the right people. Could the same also be the case elsewhere? One can but wonder...
© 2012
