German companies could generate an additional €49 billion ($52 billion) worth of goods and services in 2024 if they could meet their demands for skilled labour, according to a new study. The addition of some 573,000 qualified workers would raise production potential by about 1.1 percentage points in the current year, said the paper released by the Cologne Institute for Economic Research (IW). By 2027, the added value could total as much as €74 billion, its two authors calculated, using extrapolations to determine the skilled labour gap. Unlike the actual production result, the production poten…