The Labour Market of the Future

Abstract

The so-called “War for Talent” has been talked about since the mid-1990s (Michaels, Handfield-Jones, & Axelrod, 2001). In the meantime, the world has seen several economic crises, namely the collapse of the New Economy in the early 2000s, and the worldwide bank crisis a few years later. As I write these very lines, Europe and the world are still battling the effects of the European debt crisis. Each of these crises curbed the previously immense demand for specialists, but were followed by an all-clear. The upswing occurring after these crises also sees an increase in demand for talented, motivated staff. Apart from these rather short-term, cyclical fluctuations, however, there is the question of long-term development on the labour market. What must a country like Germany be prepared for over the next few decades? Short and mid-term developments play less of a role when answering this question, with the focus shifting to more general trends at a macro level.