Searches for “high-demand Ausbildung courses” usually turn up a confident numbered list — a top 10 or top 15 of trades supposedly crying out for workers. We looked for the official source behind these lists and didn’t find one: Germany’s Federal Employment Agency (Bundesagentur für Arbeit) doesn’t publish a ranked “top 15.” What it does publish is a shortage analysis (Fachkräfteengpassanalyse) covering around 1,200 occupations, scored against six indicators including how long positions stay unfilled and how wages are moving. So here is the honest version: what the actual data shows, without inventing a ranking it doesn’t support.
The headline finding
In the Federal Employment Agency’s most recent analysis, 163 of roughly 1,200 evaluated occupations were classified as shortage occupations — meaning, in round terms, about one in eight professions in Germany is genuinely short of qualified workers. The agency’s own summary is direct about where the pressure is worst: care and health professions have “the strongest shortages,” followed by construction and skilled trades occupations, professional drivers, and early-years childcare educators.
Where the numbers get specific
A few figures from the Agency’s own reporting show how severe some of these gaps are:
- Nursing: around 27 unemployed people for every 100 open positions in qualified nursing roles — a large shortfall by any measure.
- Plumbing and building services (Sanitär, Heizung, Klima): around 46 unemployed people per 100 open positions.
- Electricians and mechatronics: a widely cited shortfall of roughly 106,000 qualified workers by 2026 across digitalisation-linked trades, including these fields.
How this lines up with our own sectors
We place into eight sectors, and the shortage data supports the demand claims for most of them directly:
- Nursing & healthcare — the single strongest shortage category nationally.
- Skilled trades and engineering & mechanical — squarely inside “construction and skilled trades,” the second-strongest category.
- Logistics & supply chain — professional driving is named specifically as a shortage occupation.
Other sectors we work in — information technology, hospitality, food and beverages, banking and finance — sit in a different position. IT roles requiring a formal degree do appear on shortage lists in places, but Ausbildung-level IT training is more mixed and locally variable than the figures above. Hospitality and food production have real, steady employer demand in our own experience placing candidates, but we did not find them called out specifically in the national shortage analysis, so we won’t claim they are. Banking is the opposite of a shortage sector — it is the most selective and competitive route we place into, and we say so plainly on our own banking and finance page.
What “shortage” does and doesn’t guarantee you
A national shortage figure describes the labour market, not your individual chances. A sector being short of workers nationally makes it easier to find an employer willing to sponsor a training contract — it does not lower the language bar, remove the need for a genuine aptitude for the trade, or guarantee any specific employer will choose you over another candidate. We check both sides — sector demand and your actual fit — before recommending a route.
Find out where you actually fit
See the full breakdown, including language level and competition for each sector, on our programmes page, or talk to us directly about where your background fits best.
Where this comes from: shortage occupation figures are from the Bundesagentur für Arbeit’s press release on its skilled worker shortage analysis and its Fachkräfteengpassanalyse statistics portal, Germany’s federal employment agency.
