Upper Austria makes young talents fit for professional life!

Upper Austria makes young talents fit for professional life!

Today, Upper Austria is placing a special focus on strengthening young people in the labor market with the upperWORK 2025 location program. The program aims to promote qualification, orientation and new training opportunities in order to counteract the significant shortage of skilled workers in the region. State Councilor for Economic Affairs Markus Achleitner emphasizes the central role of youth in the future viability of Upper Austria. Projects like SmartUP and C’MON 17 offer individual support for young people on their way to training or a job. In addition, new training centers and support programs create perspectives, especially for disadvantaged young people.

Such a commitment is necessary because data from the Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs' skilled worker monitoring show that 618,000 people without qualifications will enter the labor market in the next five years, while only 396,000 helper positions are available. This creates a worrying mismatch between labor supply and demand.

Shortage of skilled workers and training opportunities

The shortage of skilled workers remains one of the biggest challenges in the labor market. In order to counteract this trend, early orientation and creation of opportunities for young people is essential. Initiatives like upperWORK are part of a broader strategy that also targets regional differences in demographic change, as analyzed in the skilled worker monitoring forecasts. Bottlenecks are identified in various professional groups, which is particularly important for the chemical and automotive industries.

In addition to support through programs like upperWORK, skilled worker monitoring is crucial. It analyzes the labor market flows of supply and demand for the period from 2024 to 2028 and takes into account assumptions about digitalization, climate change and geopolitical developments that impact the sales opportunities of the manufacturing sector.

New ways to attract skilled workers

Increasing the workforce potential is described as a crucial measure in this context. The analyzes examine various scenarios that focus on specific groups such as women, older people and non-German citizens. Nevertheless, it can be noted that despite efforts to increase employment and immigration, the working population as a whole is shrinking.

The monitoring also shows that high dropout rates in educational institutions particularly affect people of foreign nationality. This is a cause for concern as the potential of different population groups is not yet being sufficiently exploited. It is therefore important to take appropriate measures to increase workforce skills and promote equal opportunities.

In summary, it can be said that the programs in Upper Austria and the associated initiatives can make an important contribution to combating the shortage of skilled workers. Close cooperation between educational institutions, business and political decision-makers will be crucial to successfully mastering the challenges of the labor market.