Currently, there’s a lot of talk about short-term and long-term risks to the labor market in Germany. There’s the “Brexit” vote, still unsolved structural problems in Europe that showed during the financial and currency crisis, and the migration into Europe from the Near East and Africa. Those problems are undeniably real, and have to be approached by the forces that be. Still, various analysis and statistics point straight up for the labor market. The Federal Labor Office has been reporting record lows in the number of qualified workers looking for work, and private organization add some interesting numbers of their own.

Stepstone, the biggest job board in Germany analyzed the jobs posted on the portal during the first six month 2016, compiling the “specialist map”. Recently, and even when looking at a more long-term time frame since 2013, demand for specialist personnel has grown. Comparing the first half pf 2016 with the first half of 2013, the increase is 35 percent. Looking back one year, the difference between 2015 and 2016 is still 17 percent. The increase was especially big for IT jobs, where demand grew 40 percent over those three years.

“The strong performance of specialist personnel jobs shows that the various crises like the Brexit don’t significantly dampen the positive expectations of German companies. Employers massively invest in new employees with full contracts. Specialists who help with the growth of the company are desperately sought after. We are talking about IT-personnel, engineers and technicians – but also sales professionals, who will turn newly developed products and services into revenue.” said Dr. Anastasia Hermann, labor market expert at StepStone.de. Hence, companies are mainly looking for professionals in the classic STEM fields, but also for sales-oriented all-rounders.

And it looks like this development will continue. Three of four German Human Resources decision-makers, of the 200 interviewed by StepStone for this purpose, expect a continued or even further increased hiring rate for their company.

The “Specialist map” has been regularly published by StepStone since 2012. The analysis includes the data about the posted online job-ads as well as interviews with customers about their outlook for the new few months.