How Crowdworking Could Mitigate Skilled Labor Shortage in the German Public Sector

Germany as Europe’s largest and the world’s fourth largest economy is experiencing an enormous skilled labor shortage at the moment. This is especially true for the German public sector: According to recent studies, this shortage amounts to 360,000 employees as of January 2023 and could extend to 1,070,000 employees until 2030, if no corrective action is taken. One measure to potentially mitigate this lack of skilled labor can be crowdworking, work processed using digital platforms. This novel form of work organization, which is already frequently used in leading economies such as the US or China, could be part of a solution for this challenge. Using the lens of work system theory and especially its work system framework, this conceptual paper investigates which kind of work performed by employees of the German public sector could be suitable for a conduction via crowdworking platforms. It concludes that application testing, idea generation and innovation, microtask conduction and text creation are among the most promising realms for public administration crowdworking