Apprenticeship Training: short of 500 placements

(ADW) By the start of September, some 2,500 young people from the technical schools will be looking for a company as part of their their apprenticeship training or “stage”. However there are currently only about 2,000 places available.

This is one of the reasons why Labour Minister Nicolas Schmit, announced that for one year, the state will reimburse businesses 40% (instead of 27%) of the training allowance received by trainees with a CCP (certificate of professional competence). That is to say young people with little training, who do not have a diploma higher than a CATP. (Certificat d'Aptitude Technique et Professionnelle).

Without CATP, difficult to find apprenticeship

While many parents want their children to obtain a diploma, it is often with the assumption that this will lead to “intellectual” employment later in life. But today, obtaining a diploma has also become the key to getting "manual" work.

Classic examples of this are garages that no longer employ mechanics but “mechatronics” (combining mechanics and electronics) this is mainly due to the fact that electronics have become extremely important in cars.

About 2,000 young people now unemployed

This means that whatever the sector, it is becoming more and more difficult to find an employment in the job market for young people who only have one CCP and not a CATP diploma.

Therefore the resulting unemployment figures show "64% of those under age 25, which is about 2,000 youths, are unemployed with little or no training," said Labour Minister Nicolas Schmidt on Wednesday.

"It's not a gift to business"

This emerged from a meeting with the Education Minister and representatives of the artisan, services and industry sectors to find solutions.

The most important is the increase if reimbursements to business by the government as compensation for employing an apprentice will increase from 27 to 40% during a period of one year For other levels this remains at 27%.

"It's not a gift to companies because you have to invest more to train these young people who have a CATP," said Roland Kuhn, President of the Chamber of Trade.

Nicolas Schmit added that countries with the best results in terms of fighting against youth unemployment are those that incorporate companies in the training process.

And so there rests the question of the 500 missing places. If employers are confident, explaining that by September-October the deal will change as places become free, a problem still remains:the misguidance of young apprentices. Even if there were enough places for everyone, there are often too many candidates for certain sectors.

This applies, for example to travel agencies where there are currently 45 candidates for 9 positions. It is even worse for beauticians who are 66 for 15 positions. In the restaurant sector it is the opposite story where there are 4 times as many positions than there are candidates.

Communes asked to train their own staff

Most companies want CATP holders, but often CCP diploma holders come knocking on the door. “A phenomenon of under-qualification and bad guidance”, stated François Koepp, Secretary General of “Horesca”, calling it a "double mismatch".

The problem still remains for young people trained by companies, but are subsequently hired by a commune. In order to cope, and to increase the number of training places at the same time, Minister Nicolas Schmit wants communes in the future to train their own personnel themselves. Ditto for other various state entities.

This double imbalance means that even if new jobs are created, youth unemployment remains high. It currently represents about 13% of total unemployment figures.