According to a study by the Leibnitz Center for European Economic Research (ZEW) and the Institute of Labor Statistics (IZA), employment in Germany could benefit from digitization and automation: on the basis of a survey of 2,000 production and service companies who invested in modern technologies between 2011 and 2016, researchers are anticipating an increase in employment of 1.8% for the period between 2016 and 2021.

In particular, the demand for additional skilled employees to support the introduction of digital automation solutions is responsible for this. In particular, better paid, more complex jobs are under hardly any threat according to the study, in contrast to purely routine jobs. In view of the expected growth in inequality of income between those with little training and well-qualified employees, researchers are simultaneously warning of the need to seize the opportunity provided by the structural change: political incentives could make staff development easier and would simultaneously bring the potential to counter the increasing shortage of qualified employees in the engineering and IT sectors .