Overview of
fields of activity

Premiere for clerks

Roughly six in ten of the job vacancies analyzed are distributed across the first 10 of the 28 work areas. There were some surprising developments in the percentages and rankings here.

Source: DEKRA Akademie 2024
Base: 10,460 job vacancies

Clerks on top

For the first time, clerks were at the top of all 28 work areas, making up roughly one in every twelve positions. Employers are in particular looking for general clerks without further details on required specialization (15th place). Most likely, these specialists will take on different duties in their new positions. The second most sought-after type of specialist will work in the HR department. Demand for personnel administrators has dropped slightly, and is currently at 20th place in the overall rankings (2023: 16).  By way of comparison: Two years ago, it was among the top ten professions. Most likely, employers have covered their needs over the last two years or adjusted their hiring plans, since HR departments do not need to organize and manage so many new hires at the moment.
 

Source: DEKRA Akademie 2024
Base: 841 job vacancies (Administrative Work)

Source: DEKRA Akademie 2024
Base: 748 job vacancies (Sales Consulting)

Sales advising is back

The percentage held by this work area fell to a surprising low last year, positioned only at 7th place. Before that, sales and distribution professions had always made up the largest or second largest share of the overall sample. More than one in five job advertisements in sales consulting is directed towards job seekers with talent and experience in customer consulting and advising. The striking growth in advertisements for sales partners and sales employees is slightly distorted, and partially due to changes in the coding book; job vacancies for sales employees and sales partners were combined there for the first time.  Retail and automotive salespersons had somewhat more selection than last year. Despite the high percentage of the sample they make up, no sales consulting profession is among the top ten.

The hospitality industry urgently needs reinforcement

Compared to last year, the percentage held by the work area of hospitality and service has almost tripled. It was only higher in the year 2013. The high demand for service and reception employees as well as educators is responsible for this increase. These jobs rank second and third place among all professions. Job seekers with a commercial degree in the hotel trade can choose from more job offers this year. Potential workers need coordination and organization skills for roughly one out of eight of the positions advertised in hospitality and service.
There are a large number of open positions both in the hotel trade and in child care, however we will have to wait and see whether this high ranking is a one-time effect, or whether the work area will remain there.

Source: DEKRA Akademie 2024
Base: 740 job vacancies (Catering and Care)

Source: DEKRA Akademie 2024
Base: 722 job vacancies (Health/Nursing)

Reduction in job offers in healthcare and nursing

The percentage of healthcare and nursing professions dropped to 6.9 % of the overall sample. This result is surprising, since it still made up the largest percentage last year. Only once since data has been collected have job vacancies in healthcare and nursing fields made up a lower percentage of the overall sample (2014: 6.6 %).Within this work area, available jobs dropped in particular for nursing and geriatric specialists. Healthcare and nursing jobs are still among the top ten most sought-after careers, however, and shortfalls remain an issue. Geriatric nurses, in contrast, have fallen farther than ever before in the overall rankings (60th place). Job vacancies for physician assistants and physiotherapists, in contrast, increased significantly. They took places 17 and 31 among all professions.

Surprises on the IT job market

According to industry association bitkom, in late 2023 there was a record lack of trained specialists in IT. Nevertheless, the IT job market is still not completely exempt from economic developments. The IT area as a whole suffered relatively few losses compared to last year, but is well off of its highest level of 2018 (13.1 %) and following years.There were surprises in the percentages held by some individual IT careers: For the first time since 2010, software developers are no longer among the top ten careers (19th place), and only one in five jobs in the IT marketplace is a developer position. Business informatics specialists, in contrast, saw significant gains. They moved up by ten places in the rankings (28th position) and are now just ahead of IT system administrators.  Although the shortage in trained professionals is no longer quite as pronounced, IT specialists who stay up-to-date on current developments will likely not need to worry about their professional futures.

Source: DEKRA Akademie 2024
Base: 661 job vacancies (IT)