BBanks and savings banks advertised almost 26 percent more jobs in Germany in the third quarter than in the same period last year. A possible driver was the lack of skilled workers, about which some bank bosses had recently reported. The number of positions advertised between July and September was 29,696 positions. A year earlier there were 23,661 jobs. This is the result of a survey by Berlin-based personnel market specialist Index Gruppe, which is exclusively available to Bloomberg News.
“The shortage of skilled workers is now becoming increasingly noticeable in the banking sector. Despite branch closures, the industry needs new employees to advance digitization and to compensate for the retirement of the baby boomers,” said Jürgen Grenz, head of the Index Group. Last year, for example, LBBW boss Rainer Neske warned of a shortage of skilled workers in his industry. He referred to changing requirement profiles, for example with a view to information technology. Against this background, DZ Bank announced last week that it intends to create more jobs for junior staff.
Overall, however, employment in the banking sector is declining because jobs are being lost in the branch business, for example. Last year, the number of employees in the German banking industry shrank by 2.1 percent to 540,950, according to data from the employers’ association AGV Banken. With a view to the third quarter, the industry advertised most jobs in the areas of finance and accounting, controlling and insurance. There were 12,487 jobs. That’s nearly half of all positions posted by the sector in the third quarter, and up a quarter from the same period last year.
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The next four places are sales and distribution with 5,809 jobs, corporate governance/management with 3,829 jobs, IT and telecommunications with 3,205 jobs, and secretariat/office management and administration with 3,084 jobs between July and September. By far the biggest jump between the third quarter of last year and the current year was in the area of health/medicine/social affairs. Here, after the peak of the Covid pandemic, the banking industry advertised a total of 650 jobs, a bottom line increase of 223 percent.
Meanwhile, Frankfurt tops the list of cities in which the most vacancies were to be filled. A total of 3,880 jobs were advertised here, almost half more than in the same period last year. The financial metropolis is also benefiting from the fact that banks are relocating jobs to Germany after Brexit. Berlin, the home of many fintech companies, follows in the next places with 2,540 jobs, Munich with 1,755 positions, Düsseldorf with 1,501 positions and Hamburg with 1,447 positions.
For its statistics on the job market, the Index Group evaluates 190 print media, 212 online job exchanges, the job portal of the Federal Employment Agency and the websites of around 136,000 companies.
