Good and bad news from the domestic apprenticeship market: The total number of apprentices fell slightly in 2021, by 0.6 percent, to 107,768. On the other hand, the number of apprentices in the first year of training rose by 3.8 percent year-on-year to 33,189.
The apprenticeship market is not yet back to pre-pandemic levels: in 2019, before the Covid-19 outbreak, there were 109,111 apprentices in December. In the first year of the apprenticeship there were 33,882 trainees.
“Overall, we are not quite at the pre-crisis level among the new apprentices in the company,” commented Economics Minister Margarete Schramböck (ÖVP) on the figures in a broadcast. But the trend is going in the right direction: “With the exception of Vienna, the number of new apprentices in companies has stabilized constantly since September.” In the federal capital there was a slight decrease of 0.5 percent.
In absolute numbers, the lion’s share of the apprenticeships are in the “trade and handicrafts” division: 47,005 trainees completed an apprenticeship in this branch in 2021, 13,596 in the first year.
The strongest growth in the first year of the apprenticeship was in the “Transport and Traffic” division with a plus of twelve percent, followed by tourism and the leisure industry with an increase of 10.3 percent. There was a decline of 11.8 percent for banks and insurance companies.
New apprenticeship package
This year there should be changes at the legal level: This week a new apprenticeship package was sent for assessment. Seven new job profiles are planned, including the apprenticeships “professional photography”, “metalworking”, “metal technology”, “surface technology”, “testing technology” and “civil engineering specialist”. In addition, the training experiment “furnace construction and laying technology” will be transferred to the standard training. The ordinance is to come into force on May 1st.
Source: Nachrichten
