On the occasion of the Hannover Show the Monster online job bourse counted the number of vacancies available, and for their internet portal alone they established a number of 60.000 vacancies for engineers. In many engineer fields the demand for engineers already strongly exceeds the supply of qualified staff which, according to Mr. Dr. Willi Fuchs, chairman of the Association of German engineers (VDI), is a worrying fact.
According to the VDI the number of vacancies for engineers increased by 20 percent in 2006. The number of jobless engineers has halfed over the last ten yearsl, and in the meantime even the number of architects and construction engineers has fallen sharply. The candidates looked for are people with a well-founded expert knowledge and key qualifications such as entrepreneurial thinking, analytic skills, leader qualities and an international frame of mind.
According to Monster the by far highest demand for engineers is to be found in the field of mechanical engineering and manufacturing: For these areas the number of vacancies published on the Monster website currently amounts to about 17.000 and 9000 jobs respectively. In the field of maintenance/installation and technical sales and distribution there are more than 5000 engineer vacancies available in each category. Particularly many online job offers are available to architects and construction engineers, but also to enginees in car manufacturing industry as well as in project management.
According to Monster the high demand for engineers is also reflected by salaries paid in this field: thus starting salaries increased by about 500 Euros on an annual basis compared to the year 2005. The average annual starting salary currently stands at 40.500 Euros. The salaries for team leaders on average increased from 51.000 to 53.000 Euros per year and for department managers from 62.500 to 64.500 Euros. Just top level salaries for division directors remained unchanged at 70.000 Euros annually. However, there are big regional differences: While employed engineers without managerial functions on average earn 47.000 Euros each year in Bavaria and Baden-Wurttemberg, his or her colleagues from Saxony or Berlin are just paid 35.000 and 39.000 Euros respectively.
More information on the profession of an engineer can be found on Monster. 