First, there is a new employment record to report: according to the VDI/IW Engineer Monitor , there were about 1.19 million employees liable for social security contributions in engineering and IT professions nationally in the first quarter of 2018. On the other side of the same coin: in the 3rd quarter of 2018, there was an average of 130,500 unfilled jobs per month in these sectors. The overall vacancies in the industry therefore increased in comparison to the same quarter of last year by 7.8%, while at the same time the number of unemployed qualified personnel fell to a new low of 30,390. The greatest shortage is in IT professions, where an average of 44,220 unfilled jobs per month was recorded in the 3rd quarter of 2018.

“The German labor market is heavily reliant on experts in the engineering and computing sectors, in particular, to run current and future IT and digitization projects,” warns VDI Director Ralph Appel. “This is of particular importance in terms of international competition if Germany wants to avoid falling behind.”