Survey: Over 1m labor market vacancies seen in Germany in Q1

In the first quarter of 2014, there were 1.07 million job vacancies in the German labor market, according to a job survey released Thursday by the Institute for Labor Market and Employment Research (IAB). This amounts to 125,000 or 13 percent more labor jobs than in the first quarter of 2013, according to the survey. There was a substantial increase in labor needs in eastern Germany with 185,000 job vacancies to be filled, a good 30 percent over the previous year. In western Germany, there were 890,000 vacancies and thus an increase of about 10 percent. "Therefore, the labour market in both parts of the country grew at a very high level, which is partly due to the mild winter," said IAB labor market researcher Anja Kettner. "So there was an unusually large number of job positions, especially in agriculture and forestry with 20,000 as well as building industry with 71,000," she added. Meanwhile, industries that were less affected by the weather also showed significant increases such as machinery and automobiles. In the sectors of professional, scientific and technical services, the number of job vacancies doubled to around 160,000. The outlook for the next twelve months in many companies is positive, according to the IAB survey. One in four polled companies expected an increase in employment, while less than one in ten company forecast a drop in employment. With a representative annual company survey, the IAB records job offers in Germany four times a year, including jobs not reported to employment agencies.