You have advertised the role, extended the listing, raised the referral bonus — and the inbox stays empty. That is not your advert’s fault. In the electrical occupations, the candidate market is arithmetically empty, and measurably so: for roughly three out of four open positions in building electrics, there is no suitably qualified unemployed person anywhere in Germany.
Three out of four roles without a matching candidate
The Competence Centre for Securing Skilled Labour (KOFA) at the German Economic Institute measures every year how many open positions cannot arithmetically be filled because no suitably qualified unemployed people are available nationwide — the so-called skilled-labour gap. For building electrics at the skilled-worker level, the figures for 2025 read: 21,510 registered vacancies, 16,270 of them without a matching candidate. That is a vacancy-overhang rate of 75.6 percent — and the largest skilled-labour gap of any occupation at the skilled-worker level (Source: KOFA / German Economic Institute, Annual Review 2025).
Building electrics is not an outlier, it is the tip of a pattern. In electrical operating technology, a further 13,011 skilled workers are missing at an overhang rate of 78.2 percent. Among specialists supervising electrical engineering work the rate stands at 81.5 percent, among electrical engineering experts at 71.0 percent (Source: KOFA / German Economic Institute, Annual Review 2025). Put differently: the shortage runs through every qualification level of the field, from journeyman to engineer.
For scale: across all occupations, around 369,516 vacancies for qualified workers were arithmetically impossible to fill in 2025 — every third open position. The electrical occupations sit at the top of that distribution, not in its middle.
Why your job advert changes none of this
A job advert distributes attention among the people who are available. It does not create additional skilled workers. When 100 open positions in building electrics face an arithmetical 24 available candidates, you are competing with three other companies for the same person — and that competition is rarely decided by the advert, but by pay, commute and how well known the employer is.
How long this takes is shown by the Federal Employment Agency’s filling statistics: a skilled position stays vacant for an average of 183 days (Source: Federal Employment Agency, April 2025 to March 2026). In the neighbouring trade of plumbing, sanitary, heating and air conditioning — which competes with electrical engineering for the same construction sites and often the same apprentices — it is 296 days, second place among all occupations (Source: Federal Employment Agency, April 2025 to March 2026). What such a waiting period means commercially, we have calculated using construction as the example: 301 days — the cost of a vacant position in construction.
Add an effect that appears in no statistic but hits every calculation: while the role is open, your existing team works through the orders — with overtime, with postponed deadlines, in the worst case with rejections to new customers. The shortage therefore costs twice: first the lost output of the unfilled position, then the strain on those who absorb it.
The honest conclusion from these figures is uncomfortable: whoever searches domestically is redistributing the shortage. The advert, the bonus, the headhunter — all of them draw from the same, arithmetically empty pool. Whoever actually wants to fill the role has to enlarge the circle of people who come into question at all.
What the shortage has to do with the energy transition
The finding is all the more remarkable because the overall skilled-labour gap has recently shrunk — the labour market was weak in 2025, and companies registered fewer vacancies. That the electrical occupations still sit at the top has a structural reason, which KOFA already carried in the title of the previous annual review: shortages for the energy transition, despite a shrinking skilled-labour gap (Source: KOFA / German Economic Institute, Annual Review 2024).
The logic behind it is simple. Heat pumps, photovoltaics, charging infrastructure and grid expansion are, in their implementation, above all one thing: electrical installation. Every political target for rebuilding the energy supply translates into working hours of building electricians and operating technicians — precisely the two occupations with the largest gaps today. Demand for these hands is therefore not cyclical, disappearing when the economy weakens, but politically and technically locked in for the years ahead.
For your workforce planning this means: waiting does not improve the situation. A weak economic year like 2025 did not close the gap in building electrics — it remained the country’s largest. In an upswing it grows, it does not shrink.
Two routes to electrical staff from abroad
For companies that want to recruit internationally, two legal routes lead to the goal — and they differ in duration, effort and profile.
Route one: the skilled worker with vocational training. An electrician with completed training from a third country can enter under Section 18a of the German Residence Act. The precondition is recognition of the professional qualification — in the electrical trade usually through the Chamber of Crafts. In our experience the route takes four to six months and leads to a fully qualified skilled worker who may work independently. How the recognition procedure works in principle is described in our article on professional recognition abroad.
Route two: the worker under the Western Balkans regulation. Section 26 (2) of the German Employment Ordinance allows nationals of the six Western Balkans states to take up any employment in Germany — independent of a formal qualification. For helper and semi-skilled tasks in electrical assembly, this is the faster route: two to four months, without a recognition procedure. The limit is clear: without a recognised qualification, the work remains supporting tasks under the supervision of a skilled worker.
In both cases the process runs through the same seven steps. First, the needs analysis: you submit your staffing requirements, and the active search begins once the complete needs analysis and the signed placement contract are in place. Second, candidate search and pre-qualification, around two to four weeks. Third, candidate presentation via a document portfolio with a video or interview option. Fourth, document collection and legalisation. Fifth, the administrative procedure — the work permit takes around six to eight weeks. Sixth, the visa procedure and flight booking, around four weeks. Seventh, arrival, registration and starting work.
In total that is around four months from contract — not 48 hours, and whoever promises you otherwise is promising too much. The difference between providers lies not in the procedure, which takes equally long for everyone, but in the preparation: whether the documents are complete on the first attempt, and whether the candidate arrives linguistically and professionally prepared for the site. The information in this article is for orientation and does not replace legal advice.
What this means for your planning
Four consequences from the figures.
First: calculate with the market, not against it. An overhang rate of 75.6 percent means the probability that your advert reaches and convinces the one available candidate is low — and it falls with every month, because the gap is structural, not cyclical.
Second: the lead time belongs in your order planning. Whoever needs assembly capacity in spring starts the international search in autumn. Four months of procedure are the price of a hire that otherwise would not happen at all.
Third: separate skilled worker and worker cleanly. A recognised skilled worker replaces a journeyman. A worker under the Western Balkans regulation relieves your journeymen — pulling cables, preparing assembly, everything that can run under supervision. Each solves a different problem. Whoever needs a skilled worker and hires a worker has not closed the gap; whoever recruits a recognised skilled worker for support tasks is paying for competence they do not use.
Fourth: price the vacant position honestly. Half a year of vacancy means half a year of unwritten invoices for the orders the role should have worked through — plus overtime in the existing team and, in the worst case, rejected orders. Against that sum, four months of structured lead time are not a delay, they are the faster hire.
For the record: we deliberately give no success figures from our own placements in this article. What we describe is the market situation and the legal position, not a result we cannot yet show.
Further reading
- 301 Days: The Cost of a Vacant Position in Construction
- Why Your Vacancy Stays Open for Ten Months
- Professional Recognition Abroad: How the Process Works
Sources
- KOFA / German Economic Institute: KOFA Kompakt — Annual Review 2025: A Weak Labour Market. 2026. https://www.kofa.de/media/Publikationen/KOFA_Kompakt/KOFA_Kompakt_Jahresrueckblick_2025.pdf (accessed 27 August 2026)
- Federal Employment Agency: Shortage occupations by average vacancy duration, April 2025 to March 2026. (Statista compilation, project pool file; no freely accessible individual URL verified)
- German Employment Ordinance, Section 26 (2) — Western Balkans regulation. Official legal text (Federal Ministry of Justice, gesetze-im-internet.de).
- German Residence Act, Section 18a — Skilled workers with vocational training. Official legal text (Federal Ministry of Justice, gesetze-im-internet.de).
