Apprenticeships in Germany cut down in 2013

German Federal Employment Agency (BA) said on Wednesday that the number of young people without an apprenticeship has increased this year, as 21,000 young people in Germany don't have an education training at present, about four percent more than a year ago. While the number of registered apprenticeships fell 2.4 percent to 504,500 on September 30, the number of applicants remained at 561,200, which suggests that each company apprenticeship place has 1.2 applicants. However, 33,500 posts were still vacant at the same time due to lack of proper job prospects. In North Rhine-Westphalia, Hesse and Berlin, the situations are particularly worrying. "It has become more difficult to put candidates and training places together," said German BA Executive Raimund Becker. According to BA's annual balance sheets to the training market in 2013, only 21.7 percent of the 2.1 million companies in Germany took apprentices last year. The smaller companies took harder impact in taking fewer new apprentices.