After a long summer without any english articles (the last one was in May) I am back with some news about the German job market for chemists.
Let’s have a look in the universities first. Every year, the GDCh surveys the number of chemistry students in Germany (article with restricted access). It is interesting that a lot of students chose chemistry as a major in 2014, and the number of atucal PhD students also rose to now 8222. Some free statistics can be found on the GDCh statistics webpage.
Another study found out, that the number of students in STEM fields was rising 30% between 2008 and 2014 (link to pdf). The article has a focus on engineering, but the overall numbers should include chemistry.
For me, it seems that the number of fresh supply in the job market will not fall. I am curious what happens with the demand side. After the split of Covestro and Bayer, Covestro wants to save costs of 420 Million Euro. I wonder how they will do this. Lanxess, another Bayer daughter, just had to move out of the DAX, the German stock index.
A look at the job market in general reveals that there are 2.76 millon unemployed in Germany, which accounts to 6.4% of the workforce as defined by the agency. Here is the link to the German report. The economy grew by 0.4% in the second quarter of the year (link to economic data), which is not a lot…
On a side note, I just found out that there is an official website that advertises moving to Germany as a highly qualified chemist.
As always, statistics for chemistry unemployment can be found on my statistics page.