Despite its high unemployment level, Germany is experiencing a shortage of specialists and managers. Germany's need for highly qualified information technology (IT) workers and engineers is particularly great. Approximately 10,000 posts for computer scientists and IT specialists remained vacant in 1998. Because of the shortage of such specialists,…

Surveys by the Institut fur Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB) of German firms' job openings have been combined with job registry data from the Bundesanstalt fur Arbeit on an annual basis since 1989 in order to determine the scope and structure of the aggregate national supply of job openings. The surveys also indicated problems encountered…

An analysis of the service sector in five countries (France, Germany, Japan, Sweden, and the United States) was made through synthesis of earlier research on work patterns in the countries. Some of the findings and issues discovered concerned the following: (1) the heterogeneity of the service sector; (2) the progress of part-time work; (3)…

Is the United States getting it wrong when it comes to educating tomorrow's innovators in critical fields? It has been known for years that the only way to compete globally in information technology, engineering, nanotechnology, robotics and other fields is to give students the best educational opportunities possible. But do individuals have a…

Although there is no single measure of the degree of integration of the children of immigrants, individual trends and indicators can be interpreted to depict the status and opportunities of young foreigners residing in Germany. Although the standard of school-leaving certificates rose, the number of young foreigners is still disproportionately…

On average, unemployed U.S. citizens remain jobless for much less time than their European counterparts do. The relatively low level of unemployment in the United States is attributable to two factors: a social protection system that offers far less protection than those in Western Europe do and a broad range of job openings. The fact that…

A research project studied 4 selected matched samples of 160 youths each, aged 16-19 years, from 2 towns in England and 2 in Germany in order to compare the youths' experience of job training and the school-to-work transition. Two expanding towns--Swindon, England, and Paderborn, Germany--were paired, as were Liverpool and Bremen. Whereas…

The extension of the 1989 Institute of Employment Research (IAB)/Prognos projection of the sectoral and job-specific labor force demand by levels of qualification shows that the previous trends toward higher qualification requirements of jobs is expected to continue in Germany. The main reasons are the significant shift in favor of secondary…

In view of German reunification, the 1992-94 recession, and ongoing demographic, technological, organizational, and social changes, alternative projections of labor market and employment structures provide policy makers with needed information. The Institut fur Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB) structural labor projection (1989) forecasted…

Analysis of employment and higher education patterns among women in Britain, Germany, and Sweden found discipline is the major factor influencing labor market entry, with most women preparing for traditionally female occupations and following financially less rewarding careers. While women in nontraditional occupations begin with an economic…

The rise of the service sector is a major trend common to all western, industrialized countries. Employment in the service sector has increased in 1960-1986 in all 10 countries participating in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's Centre for Educational Research and Innovation Human Resources project (Japan, Belgium, France,…

In the 1960s, German industry experienced a greater need for labor. Recruitment agreements for "guestworkers" were concluded with a number of Mediterranean countries, with the opinion at the time being that temporary immigration would be in the interests of all involved: German firms would get cheap labor, the "guestworkers"…

This paper summarizes a comparative study of the impact of market and technological changes on human resources in banks and insurance companies in five countries: France, Germany, Japan, Sweden, and the United States. The research was organized around case studies of changes in 12 firms--9 banks and 3 insurance carriers. The paper discusses the…

This document contains eight articles from German newspapers that feature women who have achieved career success in very diverse economic sectors, while simultaneously highlighting the discrimination and other problems (including lower income, fewer promotions to executive positions, and smaller pensions) that many other German women continue to…

An international team of researchers studied the following aspects of training in Germany's retail sector: structure and characteristics, institutional and social context, employment and labor, changing conditions and their implications for skill requirements, and training and recruitment. Data were collected from an analysis of social and…