Germany's Young Professionals job market falls 27% as bachelor and master degrees rarely listed

In the first half of 2026 German employers and public institutions posted about 66,000 vacancies for Young Professionals – graduates with up to three years of experience – a drop of more than 27 % compared with the same period in 2025, when over 90,000 positions were advertised.

Only around 5,300 of those postings explicitly required a bachelor’s degree and roughly 4,200 mentioned a master’s degree. About 29,000 listings used generic terms such as “studium” or “hochschulabschluss” without specifying the qualification. Index‑Research CEO Jürgen Grenz said that naming the exact degree would help companies target candidates more precisely and increase the number of relevant applications.

The analysis, based on data from print media, online job boards, the Federal Employment Agency portal and roughly one million company websites, highlights the growing difficulty for recent graduates to find entry‑level positions in Germany.