According to the Association of German Engineers (VDI) the number of jobless woman engineers has almost halved over the past three years. While the unemployment rate of woman engineers was 21.5% in 2003, it amounted to just 12% in the year 2006 and in some fields such as electrical engineering even only 7%. In the opinion of the VDI the reasons for this sharp decline are a growing lack of specialists and an economic pick-up.
Furthermore, also the fact that technical products have to increasingly address various target groups has led to woman engineers becoming more sought-after by designer teams. However, there is still room for improvement given that the unemployment rate of 5% among men is much smaller. On the other hand the interest of women in technical carreers is constantly growing. Meanwhile one in five engineer students is female. More statistical data on the labour market and the development of the number of students are available from the VDI website. 