Germany: more apprenticeship places “thanks to” post-reunification declining birth rate

Stable costs. The disparity of publics, businesses, sectors and duration of apprenticeships makes it hard to precisely assess what businesses spend. According to the Federal Institute for Vocational Training (Bundesinstitut für Berufsbildung – BIBB), the average cost of sandwich courses in 2007 was €15,288. With around 1,8 million apprentices in Germany (figures from the Ministry of Research and Education), it means that businesses spent about €27 billion on apprenticeship. These figures are globally similar to those gathered in 2003 by the Institute for German Economy (IW) which counted 1.7 million apprentices for €28 billion. At the same time, the BIBB says that businesses earn around €11,692 per year and per apprentice, for a total of €21 billion. In the end, the annual net cost of an apprentice for a company is, in average, €3,596.
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the same period in 2007, 30,000 were still looking for a place at the end of September. Ultimately, at the end of January 2009, only 6,000 young people were still looking for a place, and an approximately similar number was still available. This positive result can be attributed to lower demand because of the arrival of generations born after the fall of the Berlin wall, when birth rate strongly decreased. The report also points to a major difference between eastern and western Lander. In the

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