Top 10 training occupations for 2016

In 2016, over one third of all new training contracts were again accounted for by just ten occupations. The occupation of office management clerk leads the way, as before, in the ranking of training occupations according to newly concluded training contracts. Approximately 28,700 young people across Germany have signed a new training contract in this occupation. This is shown by the analysis of the survey of the number of newly concluded training contracts as at 30th September 2016 conducted by the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB).

The majority of training contracts concluded with female trainees in 2016 were in the commercial occupations — office manager, management assistant for retail services, management assistant in retail and foreign trade and industrial clerk — in the occupations of medial assistant and qualified dental employee, sales assistant and salesperson specialising in foodstuffs, as well as specialist in the hotel business and hairdresser.

For men, it is automotive mechatronics technician which continues to lead the way by some distance with the remaining positions being occupied by electronics technician, management assistant for retail services, industrial mechanic, plant mechanic for plumbing, heating and air conditioning systems, information tech-nology specialist, sales assistant, warehouse logistics operator, management assistant in retail and foreign trade, and office manager.

The ten most strongly represented occupations also remain unchanged from 2016 at the top of the ranking of newly concluded dual education and training contracts. However, information technology specialist has climbed significantly from its ranking of 14 to position 11 with approximately 12,100 new contracts and an increase of 9.4%. By contrast, the number of new contracts for bank clerks has reduced. This occupation has slipped compared to 2015 from position 12 to 16 in the list of rankings —a fall of 16.9% — with approx-imately 9,400 new contracts.

The continual rise in the number of new contracts among information technology specialists since 2012 shows that the economy increasingly needs well-trained IT specialists and is committed to education and training. The information technology specialist occupation has become a core brand of IT occupation in the process. The vast majority of those opting for training in this occupation in 2016 were men, while the pro-portion of women was only around 8%.

By contrast and as predicted by the BIBB in qualification and occupational field projections, the continued decline in newly concluded training contracts among bank clerks illustrates the restructuring towards more online banking and branch concentration. In this occupation, the proportion of women with newly con-cluded training contracts in 2016 was slightly higher (52.5 %) than the proportion of male trainees (47.5 %).

The rankings of newly concluded training contracts do not allow us to infer the most “popular” training oc-cupations among young people. This is because the training decisions must always be looked at in relation to the supply of training places.

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