inary placement figures for 1999 suggest the situation has improved somewhat. At the end of August, one month before the deadline for concluding apprenticeship agreements for the 1999-2000 vocational training year, 145,500 would-be apprentices were still looking for positions - four percent fewer than at the same point of 1998 - and 64,500 positions were still unfilled, 9.4 percent more than a year earlier. September traditionally sees a flurry of last-minute listings. But even taking those listings into account, Federal Labor Agency President Bernhard Jagoda predicted in early September there will be an overall shortfall of between 5,000 and 10,000 training positions for 1999-2000. http://www.germany-info.org/newcontent/index_facts.html...
