Recent developments in the German demography will give rise to a shortage in skilled workers in the coming decades. The German economy is in need of thousands of engineers already. A solution to this problem might involve a higher degree of integration of female engineers into the workforce. Data from the microcensus 2006, the official representative statistics of the population and the labour market in Germany, confirm the existence of a hidden reserve of female engineers. Ordered response models and seminonparametric estimation methods are used to show that the labour supply in the engineering sector is mainly determined by age. In addition, the labour supply of female engineers depends on how many children they have, on the age of their youngest child, and on their partners' income. Moreover, women care more about their families, rather than focusing on their career.
The text is part of a series RePEc:hoh:hohdip Number 315/2009 19 pages
Classification:
J21 - Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure ; J22 - Time Allocation and Labor Supply ; J24 - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity