These are the findings of the new Engineering Monitor, which is compiled quarterly by the German Economic Institute (IW) on behalf of the VDI.

This means that the demand for labor in the engineering professions has reached a new record level. Compared to the same quarter last year, this represents an increase of 11.3% or almost 13,160 additional vacancies. According to the VDI/IW, the drivers include automated driving, IT security and the development of smart homes. Accordingly, many companies are looking for qualified personnel to implement IT and digitalization projects in particular.

A stumbling block for company growth

However, rising demand coupled with a low labor supply is exacerbating bottlenecks and hampering growth. In a survey of SMEs conducted by DZ Bank, two thirds of companies stated that they were having problems finding employees, with one in six of them unable to implement IT or digitalization projects as a result.

With an average of 43,590 vacancies per month in the second quarter of 2018, IT professions were the largest category of vacancies in the engineering professions. There is a particular demand for IT and electrical engineering interface skills. The civil engineering professions also continued to record very high demand with around 33,680 vacancies. Furthermore, a total of 33,710 vacancies were reported in the fields of mechanical and automotive engineering as well as energy and electrical engineering, which corresponds to around 26% of the total number of vacancies in the engineering professions.

Strongest demand in Berlin / Brandenburg

In the previous quarter, the number of unemployed people in engineering professions had already reached a record low since records began in the Federal Employment Agency's 2010 classification of occupations. The trend of falling unemployment figures continued in the second quarter of 2018. On a monthly average, 30,804 people were looking for employment in an engineering occupation, of which 23,105 were in the eight engineering occupation categories and 7,699 in IT occupations. Compared to the same quarter of the previous year, the number of people registered as unemployed fell by 8.7%. In some regions and occupational categories, this means that the supply of labor in the form of registered unemployed is already severely depleted.

In all regional labor markets, the demand for labor in the engineering and IT sector has increased significantly compared to the same quarter of the previous year. The strongest increase was recorded in Berlin / Brandenburg, where the average number of vacancies reported each month was 26% higher than in the same quarter of the previous year. The highest number of vacancies was recorded in the two southern German states and in North Rhine-Westphalia. Bavaria (26,040) and Baden-Württemberg (22,960) alone accounted for around 38% of the total number of vacancies. In NRW, an average of 23,210 vacancies were counted each month, which corresponds to an increase of almost 4% compared to the previous year.

Due to the stable economic situation and positive economic expectations, VDI and IW assume that the demand for engineers (including IT specialists) will not decrease in the coming quarters. According to the DZ Bank SME survey, the willingness to invest among German SMEs remains fundamentally high. According to the survey results, the focus of planned investments is on personnel measures. According to the survey, around a third of the companies surveyed are planning to increase their workforce over the next three years.