Demand for IT specialists on the rise

More than 29,000 IT jobs were advertised in Germany in October 2015 - an increase of almost 15% compared to October of the previous year. In the selected period (October 2015), around 17,612 companies from all sectors were looking for skilled workers in online job boards, daily newspapers and trade journals.

The demand for IT specialists such as network administrators, programmers and IT specialists has increased further: the number of vacancies for IT specialists has risen by 21.5 percent to 4,356.

The demand for programmers also increased by 18.3 percent to 8093 jobs. A total of 5163 vacancies were aimed at network administrators. This is an increase of 15.8 percent compared to the same month last year, according to the analysis of the training service provider WBS.

Good outlook for 2016

Bitkom also predicts further employment growth in the German ICT sector in 2016. 20,000 new jobs will be created this year, according to a current forecast by the digital association. This means that 1.022 million people will be employed in the sector by the end of the year.

"Within five years, companies have already created 136,000 new jobs, and employment growth will continue in 2016. Our sector employs significantly more people in Germany than the automotive or chemical industries"

says Bitkom President Thorsten Dirks.

The growth in employment is being driven exclusively by IT. Bitkom expects an increase of around 25,000 to around 795,000 in the current year. Within five years, the increase in employment in the IT sector will be around 157,000.

"These companies provide key products and important services for the digital transformation of our economy. These include applications for big data, cognitive computing, cloud computing and IT security"

says Dirks.

In contrast, employment among hardware manufacturers is expected to continue to fall slightly (down 1,000 to 23,000).