A firm’s expectation about the future business cycle is an important determinant of the decision to train apprentices, especially as German firms typically offer apprenticeships to either fill future skilled worker positions, or as a substitute for other types of labor. The current coronavirus crisis will have a strong and negative impact on the German economy, according to the current business cycle expectations of German firms. To the extent that the training decisions of firms depend on these perceptions, we expect a downward shift in firm demand for apprentices and consequently also a decrease in the equilibrium number of apprenticeship contracts. To assess the impact of changes in business cycle expectations, we analyze German data on the apprenticeship market at the state-level and at the occupation-level within states from 2007 to 2019. We apply first-differences regressions to account for unobserved heterogeneity across states and occupations, allowing us to identify the association between changes in two popular measures of business cycle expectations (the ifo Business Climate Index and the ifo Employment Barometer) and subsequent changes in the demand for apprentices, the number of new apprenticeship contracts, unfilled vacancies and unsuccessful applicants. We find that the German apprenticeship market prior to the current crisis can be characterized by excess demand for apprentices (although there are matching problems in some states, with both a high share of unfilled vacancies and a high share of unsuccessful applicants). Taking into account the most recent data on business cycle expectations up to June 2020, we estimate that the coronavirus-related decrease in firms’ expectations about the business cycle can be associated with a predicted 8% decrease in firm demand for apprentices and a 6% decrease in the number of new apprenticeship positions in Germany compared to 2019 (− 30,000 apprenticeship contracts; 95% confidence interval: ± 8000).

公司对未来商业周期的预期是决定培训学徒的重要决定因素，特别是因为德国公司通常提供学徒制来填补未来的技术工人职位，或作为其他类型劳动力的替代品。根据德国企业当前的商业周期预期，当前的冠状病毒危机将对德国经济产生强大的负面影响。就企业的培训决策取决于这些看法而言，我们预计企业对学徒的需求会下降，因此学徒合同的均衡数量也会减少。为了评估商业周期预期变化的影响，我们分析了 2007 年至 2019 年德国州级和州内职业级学徒市场的数据。我们应用一阶差分回归来解释各州和职业之间未观察到的异质性，使我们能够确定两种流行的商业周期预期指标（ifo 商业景气指数和 ifo 就业晴雨表）的变化与需求的后续变化之间的关联对于学徒，新的学徒合同、未填补的空缺和不成功的申请人的数量。我们发现，在当前危机之前，德国学徒市场的特点是对学徒的过度需求（尽管在某些州存在匹配问题，未填补的空缺比例和未成功申请者的比例都很高）。考虑到截至 2020 年 6 月的商业周期预期的最新数据，