Internally and externally recruited skilled workers in the crafts

German skilled craft businesses have relied on their own training activities for many decades in order to meet their own needs for qualified staff. Recently the sectoral percentage of companies providing training has been falling. Concurrently, the proportion of people originally trained in other branches of industry but now employed in the skilled crafts is rising. This article compares the training and employment profiles and the incomes of journeymen qualified in the skilled crafts with those of externally trained skilled workers, with a view to clarifying the consequences of external recruitment strategies as used by skilled crafts businesses.