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In the construction trade, the average waiting time is even around four months
Photo: Uwe Anspach/dpa
Customers currently have to wait an average of eleven weeks for a craftsman, and around four months for a builder.
"These are record values," says Holger Schwannecke, General Secretary of the Central Association of German Crafts.
The waiting times are not likely to decrease in the near future either: the industry is struggling with delivery bottlenecks, enormous price increases and a shortage of skilled workers - all at once.
The Internationale Handwerksmesse in Munich, where Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz wants to meet the central associations of the German economy on July 8, is marked by the crisis.
Even in construction, previously a stable economic anchor, the situation has worsened dramatically, said Schwannecke.
"Work is coming to a standstill on many construction sites, there is a lack of spare parts in car workshops, and raw materials and preliminary products are missing from industrial suppliers to the trades."
Up to a quarter of planning applications are withdrawn
In residential construction there are price increases of around 20 percent, said the Bavarian crafts president Franz Xaver Peteranderl.
In some municipalities, a quarter of the building applications will be withdrawn.
»The first housing construction companies are already warning of an abrupt end to the construction boom in the coming year.«
According to the Central Association, the handicraft businesses lack around 250,000 skilled workers.
This bottleneck, also caused "by a wrong education policy," endangers economic growth and could "become a brake on transformation for our entire country," said Schwannecke.
The skilled trades include around one million companies with 5.5 million self-employed and employees and around 360,000 apprentices.
Around 1000 exhibitors from 60 trades are expected in Munich for the International Crafts Fair, which will take place for the first time in the summer from July 6th to 10th after two years of a corona-related break.
mgo/dpa
