Germany is getting older – and needs more nursing staff. In 25 years there could be a huge gap, as statisticians predict.
According to a forecast by the Federal Statistical Office, Germany could face a shortage of between 280,000 and 690,000 nursing staff by 2049 due to the aging of society. As the Wiesbaden authority Destatis announced in Wiesbaden, the need for nursing staff is expected to increase by a third by 2049 compared to 2019 to a total of 2.15 million. For the pre-Corona year 2019, Destatis expected a need for 1.62 million nursing staff.
To develop the number of nursing staff, two variants were calculated with different focuses on demographic and social changes:
In the “trend variant”, Destatis took into account not only demographic developments but also the positive trends in the nursing labor market from the 2010s. The number of employed nursing staff will then increase to 1.87 million by 2049. This results in a gap of 280,000 nursing staff.
The “status quo variant”, on the other hand, only shows the effects of demographic developments on the future number of nursing staff. According to this variant, the number of nursing staff would fall from 1.62 million in 2019 to 1.46 million by 2049. The main driver of this development is the baby boomer generation increasingly reaching retirement age in the next ten years, which will mean that the labor market will lack the nursing staff it needs for reasons of age alone.
Source: Stern
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