You are hiring in Koblenz. Your competitor is hiring in Berlin. Same role, same skill level, same job ad. And yet your position stays open two and a half months longer on average. That is not a feeling, it is a figure from the Federal Employment Agency — and it changes workforce planning more than most employers assume.
206 days in Rhineland-Palatinate, 134 in Berlin
The Federal Employment Agency (Bundesagentur für Arbeit, BA) measures time-to-fill as the period between the employer’s intended start date and the day a registered vacancy is deregistered. For April 2025 to March 2026, the picture by federal state looks like this:
| Federal state | Time-to-fill |
|---|---|
| Rhineland-Palatinate | 206 days |
| Brandenburg | 186 days |
| Saxony-Anhalt | 177 days |
| Bavaria | 173 days |
| North Rhine-Westphalia | 171 days |
| Saxony | 167 days |
| Lower Saxony | 166 days |
| Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania | 165 days |
| Germany overall | 165 days |
| Saarland | 164 days |
| Hamburg | 161 days |
| Hesse | 156 days |
| Bremen | 151 days |
| Thuringia | 149 days |
| Schleswig-Holstein | 147 days |
| Baden-Württemberg | 142 days |
| Berlin | 134 days |
Source: Federal Employment Agency, April 2025 to March 2026.
Between first and last place lie 72 days. That is roughly two and a half months — for an identical role, purely because of location. Anyone planning nationwide with the 165-day average is planning six weeks too tight in Rhineland-Palatinate and a month too generously in Berlin.
The east-west reflex points the wrong way
The obvious explanation would be an east-west divide. The data does not support it. Western Germany sits at 165 days, eastern Germany at 163 — two days apart, effectively identical (BA, April 2025 to March 2026).
The spread runs straight through both halves of the country. Brandenburg ranks second-longest at 186 days. Berlin ranks last at 134 days — meaning best. 52 days separate them, and between them lies nothing but a state border you can cross on a commuter train.
The same holds in the west: Rhineland-Palatinate tops the list at 206 days, Baden-Württemberg sits in the bottom third at 142. Both are large territorial states, both western, 64 days apart.
Where the city states land is telling too. Berlin sits at the bottom end with 134 days, Bremen at 151 and Hamburg at 161 — all three below the national figure. All three are dense labour markets on a small footprint. The territorial states at the top of the list — Rhineland-Palatinate, Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt — are the opposite.
So what the figures show is not a compass problem. It is a density problem: where many employers and many workers sit close together, vacancies and applicants find each other faster. Where employers are spread out and the commute becomes an obstacle, it takes longer. The BA does not report these causes — that reading is an interpretation, not a measured quantity. What is documented is only the finding: the spread tracks settlement density considerably better than it tracks the compass.
For employers in Berlin and Brandenburg, this means something concrete
A Berlin employer plans with around 134 days. An employer in the Brandenburg commuter belt plans with 186. The two partly compete for the same people, often pay similar wages — and the one outside the city still needs almost two months longer.
Those 52 days are the point at which international recruitment adds up differently in rural areas than it does in the city. Not because the procedure runs faster there — it takes the same time everywhere. Rather because the benchmark is different: measured against 134 days of local search, a four-month international route looks long. Measured against 186 days, it looks like a genuine alternative.
This is not limited to Berlin and Brandenburg. The same logic applies wherever an employer sits in the catchment area of a larger city without being in it: the city’s labour market draws off the available workers, while the employer’s own search runs against the higher state-level figure. For workforce planning that is the least favourable case regional statistics recognise — and it disproportionately hits employers in cleaning, logistics, construction and finishing trades, whose sites are rarely in city-centre locations.
A second point comes on top of that: time-to-fill is not a fixed property of a location, it is the figure your alternative competes against. An employer in a state at 186 days who sets the international route’s 120 days against it shortens the time to fill by two months on paper — provided they start early enough.
What time-to-fill measures — and what it does not
Before you plan with these figures, you should know what they represent.
What is measured is the time between the start date the employer wanted and the deregistration of the vacancy with the BA. The clock therefore does not start with the decision to hire, but with the date the person was actually supposed to be there.
Only registered vacancies are captured. Positions an employer fills exclusively through its own website, through job boards or through referrals do not appear in the statistics. The real shortage may therefore be larger than the figure suggests.
Abandonment is not captured. If a vacancy is withdrawn because nobody was found, the measurement also ends — as a deregistration. A failed search looks like a successful one in the data.
It is an average. Within a single federal state, sectors and skill levels vary considerably. The state figure is a planning frame of reference, not a forecast for your specific role.
Region and skill level add up
Location is only one of two axes. The second is the skill level, and the two work together.
By skill level, the BA measures for the same period: skilled workers 183 days, all levels combined 165 days, specialists 157 days, helper and semi-skilled roles 156 days, experts 109 days (BA, April 2025 to March 2026). How closely helper and specialist roles sit together is something we broke down in a separate article.
By occupation the range widens further: interior fit-out and drywall tops the shortage-occupation ranking at 301 days (BA, same period).
In practice this means: a skilled-worker vacancy in a state with a long time-to-fill is the least favourable case the statistics recognise — and that is exactly where many employers in construction, finishing and installation sit. A helper role in a metropolitan area is the most favourable. Planning both with the same lead time goes wrong.
How far apart the two ends sit is clear from a simple comparison. The state figure for Berlin is 134 days, for Rhineland-Palatinate 206 — those are the two endpoints of the regional axis. On the skill axis, experts sit at 109 and skilled workers at 183 days. Together the two axes produce a range in which one employer can plan with a little over three months and another with well over half a year — for what is formally the same task of filling a position.
One caveat: the BA reports these two analyses separately. A combined figure per state and skill level is not contained in the sources used here. Anyone adding the two axes together is working with an estimate, not a survey — and should say so internally.
The calculation for your location, in five steps
- Look up your state figure. Take the value for your federal state from the table above, not the national average.
- Determine the skill level. Helper or semi-skilled role, skilled worker, specialist or expert. This classification also decides the legal route for international hires.
- Count backwards. From the date the person should be in place, subtract the state figure. That is the latest possible start date for a local search.
- Set the international route against it. An international hire takes around four months from contract, roughly 120 days. If your state figure is higher, the international route is not the slower one on paper — it is the faster one.
- Build in a buffer. All figures quoted are averages. An administrative procedure can shift, an embassy appointment likewise. Do not plan to the day.
What an open position costs your business per month is something the vacancy cost calculator on miotalent.de works out with your own figures.
After that, check what lead time your workforce planning currently uses and compare it with your federal state’s figure. In most businesses there is a gap of several weeks. Then assign every open position a skill level — that decides both the route and the duration.
If you want to know which route works for your location and your specific vacancies: Free initial consultation — we will call you back, when suits you?
This information is provided for orientation and does not constitute legal advice.
Read next:
- Filling helper roles: 156 days is the average
- Why your vacancy stays open for ten months — the BA shortage-occupation ranking
Sources
- Federal Employment Agency: Time-to-fill of vacancies in the federal states of Germany, April 2025 to March 2026. 2026. https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/1318416/umfrage/vakanzzeit-von-arbeitsstellen-nach-bundeslaendern/ (accessed 24 Aug 2026)
- Federal Employment Agency: Time-to-fill of vacancies by skill level in Germany, April 2025 to March 2026. 2026. https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/1318407/umfrage/vakanzzeit-gemeldeter-arbeitsstellen-nach-anforderungsniveau (accessed 24 Aug 2026)
- Federal Employment Agency: Shortage analysis (Engpassanalyse). 2026. https://statistik.arbeitsagentur.de/DE/Navigation/Statistiken/Interaktive-Statistiken/Fachkraeftebedarf/Engpassanalyse-Nav.html (accessed 24 Aug 2026)
