Less wages than those with comparable qualifications: truck drivers earn little
Photo: Holger Hollemann / DPA
Truck drivers who are skilled workers earn a below-average amount of money.
In 2020, full-time employees received an average of 14.21 euros per hour.
This was announced by the Federal Statistical Office.
In the economy as a whole, the average gross hourly earnings for skilled workers was 19.97 euros, for semi-skilled workers 16.02 euros.
According to Destatis, truck drivers earn an average of 2623 euros a month gross.
That is significantly less than other employees with comparable training and professional experience: They earned an average of 3286 euros gross.
Skilled workers earn 2,313 euros gross per month.
According to statistics from the Federal Employment Agency, there were 937,000 skilled workers in the field of vehicle driving in road traffic in Germany in 2020, about one percent fewer than in the previous year.
94 percent of professional drivers - including bus and courier drivers - are men.
The statisticians warned that a larger proportion would be leaving their professional life in the coming years:
A third of them were at least 55 years old in 2020.
The number of newcomers under the age of 25 is very low.
In 2020 there were only 33,400.
Brexit: empty shelves, no milkshakes
In the UK in particular, there is currently a shortage of truck drivers, exacerbated by the pandemic and Brexit.
Significantly fewer foreign drivers were working due to stricter immigration and work regulations.
In Great Britain alone, according to the Road Haulage Association, there was a shortage of 100,000 drivers at the end of August.
On the island, consumers therefore sometimes stood in front of empty supermarket shelves, restaurants and the fast food chain McDonald's could not deliver products.
Associations in Germany are also warning of a shortage.
"We are running into a creeping supply collapse in Germany too," said Dirk Engelhardt, Chairman of the Federal Association of Freight Transport, Logistics and Waste Management.
From the unions, however, there is a contradiction: "I don't see that this is going to be acute in Germany," says Stefan Thyroke, head of the Ver.di specialist group for forwarding and logistics.
The lack of German offspring would be made up for by drivers from Eastern European countries - also because they could no longer work in Great Britain.
jlk / dpa