Open Jobs: More than 130,000 elderly care workers wanted
Disproportion: more and more people in need of care, too few caregivers
The number of people in need of care in Germany is growing – and that requires additional staff. A new demand forecast sheds light on how difficult that will be in the coming years.
Nursing staff is in short supply. Time and again, nursing homes are unable to offer places because they lack the required number of qualified staff. But soon it will be even more difficult: According to official projections, the number of people in need of care will increase by a fifth or one million by 2040, even under conservative assumptions, so the personnel requirements of homes and outpatient services will continue to grow. In addition, the 655,000 elderly care workers who will retire by then will have to be replaced – and there will be many of them.
Consequences
A new personnel requirement forecast based on official projections, which is available to the F.A.Z., paints a more accurate picture. It shows that almost 58,000 additional nursing staff will be needed as early as 2025. By 2035, 132,000 additional staff would have to be recruited, and by 2040, as many as 191,500.
This was calculated by experts from an alliance of associations that have joined forces to form the “Initiative for a sustainable and generation-appropriate care reform”. Among them are the Private Health Insurance (PKV), the Federal Employers’ Association (BDA) and the Association of German Care for the Elderly and Disabled.
Highest additional demand in Bavaria
All these figures refer to “full-time equivalents” – taking part-time work into account, they would therefore be correspondingly higher. At present, 1.3 to 1.4 nursing staff share one full-time position. At the same time, however, the need for additional staff varies greatly between the individual German states, which has to do with regional age structures and existing staffing levels.
For Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt, for example, a rather moderate increase in demand is expected – by less than 12 percent by 2035. In North Rhine-Westphalia, the figure is 17.4 percent. And for Bavaria, the forecast even shows an additional requirement of 25.3 percent. Almost a quarter more staff will be needed in Baden-Württemberg, Berlin and Schleswig-Holstein, for example, with Hesse following with 22.2 percent.
According to the Federal Statistical Office, 52,300 people started nursing training last year. However, around 60 percent of these work in nursing. This suggests that even if no trainees drop out and 25,000 new people enter nursing care for the elderly each year, that is too few to replace older people who leave and to cover the additional demand. The alliance of associations will soon present its own proposals on how to solve the problem.
BY DIETRICH CREUTZBURG, F.A.Z Online 21.06.2023
Original Source:
F.A.Z. Online https://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/pflege-mehr-als-130-000-altenpflegekraefte-gesucht-18980339.html