Abstract

The nursing industry is acutely lacking skilled workers. With the demographic aging of the population, the situation will continue to worsen in the long term. One of the reasons for the shortage of skilled workers is: salaries cited as being too low. Since 2012, wages in nursing have risen largely in line with general wage developments until 2019; in geriatric care, the increases have been above average. After 2019, wages in both nursing and geriatric care grew above average in contrast to general wage developments. The latter stagnated in the Corona year 2020, mainly due to the extensive use of short-time work benefits (Pusch/Seifert 2021: 99). Since 2021, inflation has played an increasingly important role because its above-average increase neutralizes wage increases to a much greater extent than in the past. To classify the nominal wage development, we also calculate the price-adjusted real wage development based on the consumer price index prepared by the Federal Statistical Office.