German Industry Needs 137,000 IT Experts

Germany's shortage of information technology specialists has worsened, according to the digital industry association Bitkom. The number of vacancies rose by almost 43%, to 137,000, last year, making the situation in the IT labor market even tighter than it was in the pre-coronavirus year of 2019 when 124,000 vacancies for such experts could not be filled. The pandemic slightly mitigated the shortage of skilled workers in 2020 and 2021.

Bitkom president Achim Berg spoke of a structural shortage of skilled workers in the field's labor market when presenting the figures on Wednesday. "The shortage of IT experts is increasingly causing problems for companies and will worsen dramatically in the coming years," he said. Berg referred to the fact that numerous skilled workers from the boomer generation are retiring at the same time as significantly fewer young people with information technology qualifications are entering the labor market. "The shortage of skilled workers is becoming the main obstacle to the digital transformation," Berg lamented. He advocated the targeted poaching of experts from Russia and Belarus.

According to a Bitkom survey, more than a third (37%) of companies with open information technology positions would be willing to hire specialists from Russia or Belarus, provided they first passed an official security check. Bitkom Research interviewed 854 companies with three or more employees in Germany by phone. The survey is representative of the economy as a whole.