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Valeria Quispe / Gero Kunath / Sabine Köhne-Finster / Dirk Werner IW-Report No. 55 8. November 2025 Calculation of skilled labor shortages by economic sector

Since 2020, the German Economic Institute (IW) has been calculating the shortages of skilled workers in Germany with a uniquely developed methodology (Burstedde et al., 2020).

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Methodik und Ergebnisse einer methodischen Erweiterung der IW-Fachkräftedatenbank
Valeria Quispe / Gero Kunath / Sabine Köhne-Finster / Dirk Werner IW-Report No. 55 8. November 2025

Calculation of skilled labor shortages by economic sector

Valeria Quispe / Gero Kunath / Sabine Köhne-Finster / Dirk Werner German Economic Institute (IW) German Economic Institute (IW)

Since 2020, the German Economic Institute (IW) has been calculating the shortages of skilled workers in Germany with a uniquely developed methodology (Burstedde et al., 2020).

This methodology allows to determine the demand for skilled workers in 1,300 occupational categories. Until now, it has not been possible to determine skilled worker shortages by individual economic sector.

A methodological extension enables calculating skilled worker shortages in departments of the Classification of Economic Activities (2-digit level of WZ 2008). This allows not only to analyze which skilled workers are needed nationwide and how many, but also in which industries they are missing. This methodology takes into account all occupations in an economic sector and not just its core occupations. It is thus possible to identify skilled labor shortages for an industry that are not part of the core occupations but are nevertheless relevant to the economic activity of companies in that industry.

This report first examines the data basis, describes the methodology for calculating skilled labor shortages by economic sector and other key figures, and presents an analysis of the skilled labor situation in individual economic sectors with particularly large skilled labor shortages as an example.

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Methodik und Ergebnisse einer methodischen Erweiterung der IW-Fachkräftedatenbank
Valeria Quispe / Gero Kunath / Sabine Köhne-Finster / Dirk Werner IW-Report No. 55 8. November 2025

Calculation of skilled labor shortages by economic sector

Valeria Quispe / Gero Kunath / Sabine Köhne-Finster / Dirk Werner German Economic Institute (IW) German Economic Institute (IW)

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Michaelle Nintcheu IW-Kurzbericht No. 96 28. November 2025

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The Opportunity Card is one of the most popular new provisions of the German Skilled Immigration Act and makes it easier for third-country nationals to access the labour market – but the regulation has been difficult to implement so far and is still unknown to ...

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Carolina Guzman Martinez / Alexandra Köbler / Oliver Koppel IW-Kurzbericht No. 87 13. October 2025

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