FAQ – Frequently Asked Questions for the IAB Job Vacancy Survey

The IAB Job Vacancy Survey is a large quarterly survey of establishments and administrations that provides a representative picture of the development of the unmet labour demand in Germany. It determines the total number of all vacancies on the labour market, including those that are not registered at the Federal Employment Agency (BA). In addition, it provides information on the last case of successful hiring, recruitment failure and assessments of (current) labour market policy developments.

The Job Vacancy Survey is specialized on questions about recruiting and vacancies in establishments. The questionnaire is divided into topic blocks of different sizes:

• Total employment: Includes questions on both the number and the level of qualification of employees.
• Total personnel requirements: dedicated to the search for new employees, their level of qualification, job title of vacancies, as well as assessment of the future development of the number of employees
• The last 12 months: This section deals specifically with the last year of the establishment. Questions are asked about the hiring and retirement of employees.
• Working time accounts: The focus here is on working time accounts, how they are structured and how they are used.
• Employee representation/collective bargaining: It is about collective bargaining and establishment co-determination.
• Employment of unemployed persons: This section of the questionnaire intending to provide a more detailed overview of the labour market opportunities of unemployed and long-term unemployed. In addition, there are questions about the consideration of applications from the long-term unemployed, as well as the characteristics attributed to them by establishments.
• The last case of a new hiring subject to social insurance contributions: Detailed questions about the last hiring, such as gender, hiring process, type of search or type of occupied position or the agreed hourly wage are queried here.

Recruitment failure: Here the motives of the enterprises to stop a personnel search are on the foreground. Among other things, the reasons for the termination, the level of requirements of the job as well as the search strategy of the companies are asked.

Employers search for persons who are to be employed by the establishment in an employment relationship. This includes all employees, civil servants and part-time employees (mini-jobs). Apprentices, temporary workers from other companies, internships for training purposes, working students and one-euro jobs are not counted. Persons borrowing to other premises or companies are counted. The establishment must currently search for such employees. The point in time of recruitment is irrelevant.

Employees subject to social insurance in the sense of the survey are all trainees and employees who are not marginally employed or who are public funded (e.g. one-euro job). Also excluded are self-employed persons, civil servants and temporary workers.

The IAB Job Vacancy Survey asks questions about the recruiting and hiring process of the last new hiring of an employee subject to social insurance conributions. This recurrent and detailed data collection on hiring processes is a unique feature of the IAB Job Vacancy Survey worldwide. It provides information about the characteristics of the filled position, the hired employee, search and recruitment channels, the degree of involvement of the employment agency, about the duration of searching and hiring, number of applications, difficulties in the hiring process, as well as accepted compromises. Because of the annually repeated survey, especially long-term changes and developments in the recruitment process can be analysed precisely.

The IAB Job Vacancy Survey asks about the last new hiring within the last 12 months. In case of multiple new hirings on the same day, the person whose last name appears first in the alphabet, should be selected. This resembles a random selection of a new hiring within an establishment, depending on the time of participation in the survey. Thus, it is possible that the last new hiring is not typical for the usual search and hiring behaviour of an establishment. However, by pooling a large amount of responses in the IAB Job Vacancy Survey, a valid statistic is obtained, as this allows different new hires to be represented according to their occurrence in all establishments. Thus, reliable and representative statements about the hiring processes and their changes can be made. This questionnaire methodology makes it possible to study hiring processes without establishments having to provide information on all new hires.

Potentially, all establishments with at least one employee subject to social insurance contributions can be surveyed excluding of private households. The survey should be answered by personnel managers or managing directors with personnel responsibility.

Every year a new random stratified sample is drawn from the entire population of establishments, which deviates in certain characteristics from a normal distribution of the establishment characteristics (disproportionally stratified random gross sample). The sample is stratified bay region, establishment size class and economic sector.

The Institut Economics & Data ED23 GmbH on behalf of IAB conducts the survey. The company T.I.P. BIEHL & PARTNER is currently carrying out the quarterly telephone survey. For further questions, e.g. on data protection of the survey or on Economix Research & Consulting in general, please contact Dr. Ben Kriechel (Economix Research & Consulting Lindwurmstraße 9, 80337 Munich) or us.

The number of vacancies based on the IAB Job Vacancy Survey is part of the European job vacancy statistics. The IAB reports the number of job vacancies in Germany to Eurostat every quarter on behalf of the Federal Government. Within Germany the evaluation of our survey data is met with great interest by politics, the business community and interested experts. The results of the research are an integral part of IAB's policy advice. You can find an overview of current scientific work and publications on policy advice based on it here

The annual repetition of the survey in relation to the information about the number and structure of vacancies and information about the last new hiring, which are essentially the same for all the years, means that the data from the IAB job vacancy survey can also be analysed over time. Since 2000, a special questionnaire has also been part of the IAB job vacancy survey. This questionnaire is dedicated to the establishment assessment and use of various labour market policy instruments in the context of the Social Code Book II and can change with each survey wave. For this reason, long-term developments can only be examined to a limited extent in this part of the questionnaire.

You are welcome to get in touch with our contact person Alexander Kubis or contact us via the following e-mail address: IAB.Stellenerhebung@iab.de