Daniel Stelter: The collapse of a key industry - and no one wants to hear the only solution

Around 350,000 jobs have been lost in the metal and electrical industries since 2019. Every month, another 10,000 lost jobs mark the dramatic decline of a mainstay of the German economy and our prosperity.

Responsible for this development is, on the one hand, the technological upheaval in the automotive industry - electric cars have fewer components and therefore require fewer workers to produce them - and, on the other hand, the massive loss of competitiveness of the location and the company.

China in particular benefits from significant cost advantages in terms of personnel and energy and is now technologically equal or even superior in many areas.

While German companies were able to realize price premiums in the past and thus compensate for the disadvantages in terms of unit labor costs and energy and bear higher tax and bureaucratic costs, this is no longer possible today.

The scale of the need for adjustment is frightening: According to data from the employers' association Gesamtmetall, labor costs per hour increased by 41 percent between 2015 and 2025, but real hourly productivity only increased by 17 percent. No wonder that companies have been reporting a negative net investment ratio for several years now, i.e. allowing their capital stock to erode.