Technical nursing staff in Germany earn 1,730 euros more per month than a doctor in Spain

Germany is experiencing a significant need for skilled workers. In the country there are what they call “occupations with bottlenecks” in which the Federal Employment Agency identified a shortage of qualified personnel much higher than average, which causes salaries to increase. At the top are the technical nursing staff, who earned an average of 4,067 euros gross per month in 2023. The average salary of a doctor in Spain last year was 2,340 euros without supplements (which do not contribute), this means that a person with a technical qualification in Nursing care in Germany earns 1,728 euros more per month than a person qualified in Medicine in Spain.

The average salary of a person who has studied Vocational Training and is hired full-time in Germany is 3,714 euros, therefore, a person who has technical training in Nursing would be earning 350 euros more than the average and those who are dedicated to geriatric care They are around 200 euros more. In Germany as a whole, the average salary closed 2023 at 4,380 euros gross per month, while in Spain it was 1,920 euros per month, according to Adecco.

In Germany, salaries by agreement grew by an average of 3.7% year-on-year in 2023, well below inflation, which closed the year at 5.9%, according to data from the Federal Statistics Office (Destatis). Excluding extraordinary payments (which in the case of France and Germany are included in collective bargaining and not by law, as is the case in Spain), the salary increase would be 2.4% year-on-year. Precisely, this salary increase in Europe’s locomotive is due to the compensation bonuses for inflation that were paid throughout the year. The minimum wage is set at 1,880 gross euros per month.

However, not all technical occupations requiring a vocational qualification in Germany received above-average salaries. For example, skilled workers in plumbing, heating and air conditioning They earned an average of 3,412 euros last year, 300 euros below the average. Professional drivers earned around 630 euros below (3,088 euros gross per month) and agricultural technical workers were 1,100 euros below the average (2,060 euros gross on average).

It must be remembered that in Germany, the nursing profession is considered a technical profession. In Spain, however, it is a university degree. Thus, what in Spain is known as technician in Auxiliary Nursing Care (TCAE) He earned an average of 1,100 to 1,300 euros gross per month in 2023. As reflected in the Official State Gazette, the annual base salary of a nursing TCAE is 16,165 euros gross per year, that is, 1,347.14 euros gross per month in public health.

For its part, the university Nursing staff varies from public to private. According to the Job Ted portal, The average salary of this staff is between 26,000 and 30,000 euros gross per year in public health. On the other hand, in private healthcare, this amount drops to 15,000 gross euros per year on average. However, as with technical staff, the salary changes depending on the community and the years worked.

In a recently published report by the Ifo Institute, it states that the shortage of qualified employees in Germany “has become a problem that affects all economic sectors and regions.” In a survey carried out in the think tank conclude that the shortage of skilled workers in German companies “has eased somewhat.” Even so, The figures are still worrying. According to the survey, 36.3% of companies are currently experiencing a shortage of qualified workers, up from 38.7% in October 2023. A year ago (2022), according to Eurostat data, 49.7% of companies Companies reported interruptions in their activity due to lack of qualified personnel.

Currently, the services sector is the one that is most affected (42%). In legal and accounting services, 69.2% of companies cannot find candidates that they need, stand out in the Ifo. In the hotel and logistics sectors “approximately one in two companies is desperately looking for qualified personnel.” Due to the lack of orders in the manufacturing sector, the shortage of qualified workers has been easing for more than a year and now stands at 28.2%.

But the most affected sector, by far, among manufacturers is the food industry with 40.3%. In commerce and construction, just over a quarter of companies complain about the lack of qualified workers.

In the industrial sector, a year ago Germany had the highest percentage in the European Union of companies declaring a shortage of qualified personnel (42.8%) along with Slovenia (41.3%). The Netherlands and Hungary follow with just over 40%. At the lower end of the table are Italy with 7%, Spain (8.4%) and Cyprus (3%).

The deputy director of the Ifo Center for Macroeconomics and Surveys, Klaus Wohlrabe, assured that “The weakening of the economy is reducing the demand for qualified workers in the short term”, even so he withdrew that “the fundamental problem is here to stay.”

Currently, the German economy is not going through its best moment. The country closed 2023 being the only G-7 economy to enter a recession when GDP fell by 0.3%. For this year the Governmentdrastically reduced the country’s economic growth to 0.2%. The council of economic advisors, known as ‘the five wise men’, set the country’s potential growth at 0.4%. For its part, the OECD also lowered its forecasts for the German economy by three tenths to 0.3% and expects that in 2025 it will reach a timid 1.1%. The Bloomberg consensus is more aligned with the Government and foresees an expansion of 0.2%.

According to the forecasts released for this spring by the Ifo, the German GDP will close the quarter below zero (-0.1%) compared to the same period in 2023. Analysts predict that the recovery will begin to be noticed “in the second half of the year.”

“When the economy recovers, the shortage will worsen again,” Wohlrabe added. “What’s more, demographic change will further exacerbate the problem in the coming years,” she said. This means that People retiring today are much more numerous than people still of working age or enter the labor market for the first time, so the working-age population is falling noticeably. A problem that not only affects Germany, but Europe in general. “This trend will increase in the coming years as baby boomers retire,” they say from Ifo.

To this we must add that there is a lack of young talent to replace the positions they left vacant. those born between 1960 and 1970. At the same time, the good situation in many sectors also brings with it the need for personnel that many companies can only obtain with great effort or cannot obtain at all. In addition, sectors such as hospitality and tourism were greatly affected by the pandemic, forcing many of their workers to move to other economic sectors.