European ‘Green Recovery’ in 2021 Likely Means Pink Slips for Germany’s Labor Market

Jan. 4 , 2021 (EIRNS)—There have been numerous fake forecasts for Germany and Europe in 2021, as ostensibly becoming a year of strong post-pandemic recovery. For the labor market, however, it is almost certain that absent a crash program for the real economy, as opposed to merely a crash in both the real economy and fantasy-world of finance, several hundred thousand jobs will be eliminated, for instance, in Germany.

The impending wave of insolvencies among productive Mittelstand companies will send up to several hundred thousand workers home, with not much perspective of finding any other work, given that for the Green Deal, other qualifications are required. Automobile companies, and especially the supply industries, will be hit hard by the abrupt shift to e-mobility: A survey carried out for the German government in January 2020 already warned against the loss of half of the automobile industry’s 800,000 jobs over the next years with production of combustion engines phased out in favor of new e-motors. Most of these latter may even be produced by German automakers like Daimler in China, with no jobs included for Germans in Germany.

The year-end forecast by Gabriel Felbermayr, President of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, that Germany will lose 600,000 jobs during 2021, is even a rather rosy glance into the future, which is more likely to experience many more jobs killed.