The economy is thirsty for people, and the number of job openings is larger than it has been in a long time. Harald Mahrer is now raising the alarm.
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In the future years, the mismatch in employment exchanges will worsen. Hundreds of thousands of employees will go missing very soon. On Tuesday night, Chamber of Commerce President Harald Mahrer presented a grim image of the future in the ZIB2 studio.
"We rang the alarm, from Lake Constance to Lake Wörthersee, so that it was heard," said the Vice grande, kicking off the conversation with ORF star Armin Wolf. He speaks candidly about the employment market's enormous obstacles.
Austria is now facing 220,000 openings, with an additional 363,000 expected by 2040. "We've got a tremendous problem!" said Mahrer. For more over two decades, the economy has been accused of displacing young people with older workers. "It has now shifted."
He had earlier stated in the run-up to his ORF visit, "If we do not take countermeasures, it will cost us all prosperity." It is lacking in every nook and crevice, across all industries and levels of education in all federal states.
A shift in opening hours would also boost employment pressure: "When I was a kid, the bakery didn't open at 6 A.M. on Sunday," but today customers would be clamoring for rolls and pretzel sticks on the last day of the week. But, someone must first be present in the shop and working.
In summary, demands such as a four-day work week are unacceptable to the President of the Chamber of Commerce. According to Mahrer, reducing working hours is a "economic death sentence," as he stated in the afternoon. He also campaigned for more money rather than more free time during the night performance on ORF.
Due to a scarcity of labor, many enterprises would already be paying more than the collective agreement, and the social partners would virtually invariably impose high compensation for employees.
Mahrer clearly thrived when it came to extending daycare and all-day schools. This should be publicized since it is a "matter of the heart" for him. At the end of the day, the economy has made progress in this area, "but we are still a long way from where we want to be."
Politics, of course, is to blame for this. The head of the Chamber of Commerce, who was also a government coordinator, refused to certify the turquoise/black barrier in several sites in this area.
"You can't attribute that to a party-political approach, but to the people's origins and ages." People are more open-minded in some areas than others. "We're drilling thick boards here," Mahrer explains.