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German bars and restaurants still short-staffed following pandemic

The Local (news@thelocal.com)
The Local ([email protected])
German bars and restaurants still short-staffed following pandemic
A restaurant searching for staff in northern Germany. Many industries are struggling with staff shortages in Germany. Photo: picture alliance/dpa/dpa-Zentralbild | Jens Büttner

Many staff left their jobs in German bars and restaurants during the pandemic for other work – and the country’s hospitality sector is still running short of workers.

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Germany’s federal statistics office says bars and restaurants in the country are gradually catching up on staff shortages brought on by Covid-19, and 2022 saw a 12.5 percent increase in hospitality hiring.

But there’s still a long way to go.

Despite business being significantly more stable again, Germany’s gastronomy sector is still running with 11.8 less staff than it was in 2019 – the year before the pandemic began. Hiring remains a challenge as many former employees have left the sector permanently, having been put off by the instability and disruption of repeated closures throughout the pandemic.

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The situation for bars has been markedly worse than for restaurants and caterers, with those offering food having made it through Covid-19 with fewer staffing challenges than pubs and clubs, for example.

READ ALSO: German employers urge action to fill two million jobs

Although bars have increased their staff by about 36 percent compared to the start of the coronavirus crisis, they’re still running with around 21 percent less staff than they were before.

Though hospitality is a particularly hard-hit sector, most parts of the German economy are suffering from labour shortages – particularly in skilled fields.

Foreigners are being increasingly encouraged to help fill jobs and the federal government is planning to relax some of the more burdensome immigration requirements to help attract more skilled workers from abroad. The federal Labour Ministry estimates that a net of 400,000 new arrivals are needed every year in Germany in order to plug yawning labour market gaps.

READ ALSO: Foreign workers filled over two-thirds of new jobs in Germany in 2022

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