The German Job Vacancy Survey in the IVth quarter of 2009: Staffing in times of crisis

Abstract

"Despite the international financial and economic crisis, the German labour market proved surprisingly very robust. Even the manufacturing sector that was hit by the crisis in a large way did not suffer considerable numbers of layoffs; in fact, employment remained fairly stable. This suggested that a closer look at staffing processes during the crisis year 2009 might be worthwhile: How did recruitments take place, and what differences occurred in comparison to the boom years of before? During the recession, job offers decreased markedly. There were up to 75 percent fewer vacancies in certain areas of the manufacturing sector in the fourth quarter of 2009 than in 2007. In contrast, a clear increase in job openings was noted in some service sectors. As far as staff reductions were concerned, the share of layoffs increased only slightly compared to the years before. About one-quarter of the new recruitment jobs in 2009 were hard to fill, fewer than in the two years previously. It was mainly small businesses with less than 10 employees that suffered from difficulties in filling open positions: here almost every third staffing process proved to be difficult. About half of all new recruitments in 2009 were on fixed-term contracts. For the first time, the share of temporary contracts for academics also increased to more than 40 percent. This is equivalent to an increase of almost 10 percentage points." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

Cite article

Heckmann, M., Kettner, A., Rebien, M. & Vogler-Ludwig, K. (2010): Unternehmensbefragung im IV. Quartal 2009: Stellenbesetzungen in Zeiten der Krise. (IAB-Kurzbericht 23/2010), Nürnberg, 8 p.