Abstract

Companies report that it is increasingly difficult to fill vacant jobs. In many rural regions in particular, labor supply is declining. Therefore, we investigate the regional extent of skilled labor shortages with a special focus on the situation in rural areas. Demographic aging in Germany tends to lead to a decline in labor supply. In conjunction with a net outmigration of young workers in particular, many rural regions, especially those in eastern Germany, have experienced a decline of their labor force in recent decades, in some cases sharply. On the one hand, this was associated with relieving effects on the labor market, which were reflected by decreasing unemployment rates. On the other hand, some indicators suggest that it has become more difficult for companies to fill vacancies with workers whose qualifications and skills match their needs. Model calculations indicate that these difficulties might further increase in the future. Against this backdrop, we are interested in the extent to which companies in rural areas currently face skills shortages compared to those in metropolitan areas and whether the intensity of shortages differs across rural regions. In addition, we would like to understand whether systematic differences in regional skilled labor shortages are related, on the one hand, to the occupational structure of rural areas, for example, to a relatively high share of crafts occupations, a labor market segment in which there are particularly large numbers of vacancies per job seeker in Germany. On the other hand, we ask whether skilled labor shortages in rural areas differ from those in agglomerations, irrespective of regional economic specialization, and what role other structural differences play.