263 of 1.132 dated adverts have been running for more than 180 days. They have been advertised continuously for over half a year.
Job Market Monitor
How many healthcare vacancies are currently open, where they are and for how long. Counted from the public job postings of the Bundesagentur für Arbeit, the EU's EURES portal and employers' own careers pages. As at: 17 October 2026.
263 of 1.132 dated adverts have been running for more than 180 days. They have been advertised continuously for over half a year.
Lower than in the rest of the clinical market, which stands at 39,6 per cent. 332 of the 1.531 positions in this selection are advertised by temporary staffing and recruitment agencies.
A concentrated market: ten hospitals or groups account for 390 of the 1.480 adverts. Anyone searching here competes with a few large players rather than many small ones.
689 hospitals, providers and practices are advertising 1.531 positions between them. Those recruiting for several at once search differently from those recruiting for one.
Regional
1.531 open positions across 87 postcode regions in Germany, plus the breakdown by profession and by source.
Each dot is a postcode region in Germany. The area reflects the number of open positions, the colour the share of positions waiting longer than 90 days. Click to pin a region. The name is the largest town we count in that region, not its official designation.
All sources are publicly accessible. From them we publish counts only, never an advert.
Pay transparency
That is 1.2 per cent. Another 510 refer to a collective agreement without naming a figure. 1,002 say nothing at all about pay.
What counts is a specific figure in the text of the advert. A reference to TVöD, AVR or an in-house agreement counts as a category of its own and not as a missing entry: it is information, just not an answer.
Trend
The monthly series of adverts that are still open today. It rises towards the right, and only one of the two reasons for that is the market.
Two reasons why this curve rises towards the right, and only one of them is the market. First, for each month we count only the adverts that are still open today ; anything that has been filled has disappeared, so older months systematically drop off. Second, our own coverage has expanded over the period: hospitals' own career pages were added in September 2026, and the number of adverts checked each night rose from 4,000 to 20,000 over the same period. Part of the increase is therefore not more market, but more visibility. A statement about growth can only be derived from this once several reference dates with the same coverage are available; the first is from 13.10.2026.
Analysis
There is deliberately no average duration here: it grows with every day on which nothing happens, and would therefore look all the better the worse the market is doing. The distribution shows the same thing honestly, together with the share filled via temporary staffing.
Share of the 1,132 listings that carry a publication date. The rest have none and stand as a separate class, rather than quietly shrinking the overall population.
| Vacancy duration in hospital nursing | 269 days |
| Vacancy duration in elderly care | 296 days |
| Shortage indicator for nursing professions | 2.7 out of 3 |
Bundesagentur für Arbeit, skilled worker shortage analysis, as at 2024. To the source
This is not the same figure. The Bundesagentur measures the completed vacancy duration, in other words how long a post was open that was eventually filled. We measure the other side: the posts that are still open today, and how long they have been waiting. The official figure says how long it takes to fill a post when it works. This page shows how much is not working right now.
In this market, temporary staffing firms are employers just as hospitals are, and they advertise posts themselves. The figure judges no one, it describes the market.
This is where the market differs most. Click to filter.
Competition
The number of adverts alone says nothing about what the competition looks like. A hundred posts from seventy hospitals is quite different from a hundred from ten.
Adverts without an identifiable employer name are excluded here; otherwise they would be the largest advertiser of all.
15 of 1,480 adverts are online for the second time
That is 1.0 per cent. They had already disappeared once and have come back.
An indication, not proof. A listing can also disappear because a portal contract expired, the source was briefly unavailable or the text was revised. What is measured is a disappearance and a return, not a failed hire.
By specialty
The 9 largest, counted only where at least three different employers are behind them. Plus how many of them have been waiting longer than 90 days. That is the difference between high demand and a genuine shortage.
| Area of work | Open | Employer | > 90 days |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anaesthesiology | 14 | 11 | 42,9 % |
| Surgery | 11 | 11 | 18,2 % |
| Trauma surgery and orthopaedics | 8 | 6 | 50,0 % |
| Urology | 8 | 8 | 37,5 % |
| Ophthalmology | 5 | 5 | 20,0 % |
| Cardiac surgery | 5 | 4 | 40,0 % |
| Vascular surgery | 3 | 3 | 33,3 % |
| Ear, Nose and Throat Medicine | 3 | 3 | 33,3 % |
| Neurosurgery | 3 | 3 | 100,0 % |
Metropolitan areas
Led by Berlin with 170 vacancies. Only locations backed by at least three different employers are counted. Anything below that would be a statement about a single hospital, not a statistic.
| City | Open | Employer | > 90 days |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin | 170 | 52 | 30 |
| Osnabrück | 106 | 3 | 1 |
| Hamburg | 63 | 32 | 25 |
| München | 58 | 28 | 10 |
| Köln | 33 | 15 | 10 |
| Hannover | 24 | 13 | 2 |
| Stuttgart | 24 | 15 | 7 |
| Erlangen | 17 | 6 | 1 |
| Bremen | 15 | 11 | 5 |
| Essen, Ruhr | 14 | 7 | 5 |
| District | Open | Employer | > 90 days |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kreisfreie Stadt Essen | 296 | 19 | 5 |
| Kreis Recklinghausen | 205 | 12 | 9 |
| Kreis Düren | 162 | 6 | 4 |
| Märkischer Kreis | 85 | 11 | 12 |
| Kreis Minden-Lübbecke | 72 | 10 | 6 |
| Rhein-Kreis Neuss | 67 | 23 | 33 |
| Kreis Soest | 60 | 22 | 1 |
| City of Bottrop | 60 | 3 | 0 |
| Städteregion Aachen | 45 | 13 | 20 |
| Kreis Warendorf | 41 | 10 | 5 |
Structure
The figures above are the demand. This is the market behind it: institutions from the official registers and from the job adverts themselves.
Market report
A document with all the key figures of this selection, ready to share and cite. With date, methodology and sources on the same page as the figures.
Questions and answers
The questions we are asked about the survey, with our answers. Including the awkward ones.
Publicly advertised healthcare vacancies that were still traceable on the reference date. We count the advert, not the budgeted post: a vacancy that disappears from its source no longer counts from the next run onwards.
From the job board of the Bundesagentur für Arbeit, the European Union's EURES portal, the career pages of the organisations themselves and individual specialist portals. The official registers are added for the structure of the organisations. All sources are publicly accessible, and the figures per source are shown separately on this page.
Once every night. Every reference date is retained, so that trends can be read over time instead of one snapshot overwriting the previous one.
Measured on 14 October 2026, the monitor lists 45,246 open nursing vacancies in Germany; the Bundesagentur lists 49,426 in the same occupational fields. That is around 92 per cent of their total. This is not a coverage rate: we have adverts that do not appear there, and we are missing some that do. And both figures are smaller than actual demand, because by no means every open position is publicly advertised.
That can happen, because the same vacancy may appear on several portals. We count per source and report the sources separately, rather than claiming a de-duplication we cannot substantiate. If you need a lower bound, take the largest single source; if you need an upper bound, take the total.
Because fewer than three different employers lie behind them. Anything below that would be a statement about a single organisation, not a statistic. The threshold is anchored in the survey itself, not in the display: what the database does not release, no view can reveal.
No. No individual ad, no employer name, no address. The monitor shows counts only. klinovo does not run third-party ads itself.
Because it grows with every day on which nothing happens, and would therefore look all the better the worse the market is doing. Instead, you see the distribution across five classes. Ads without a publication date form a class of their own, rather than quietly shrinking the base population.
No, it is the other side of the coin. The Bundesagentur measures completed vacancy time, that is, how long a post was open that was eventually filled. This monitor measures the posts that are still open today, and how long they have already been waiting. The official figure says how long filling a post takes when it succeeds. This page shows how much is currently not succeeding.
Not yet. The curve rises towards the right, and only one of the two reasons for that is the market. Each month counts only the ads that are still open today, which is why older months systematically fall off. At the same time, our own coverage has expanded over the period. A statement about growth can only be derived once several reference dates with the same coverage are available.
Yes, with a source credit: klinovo job market monitor, plus the reference date. Every selection can be downloaded as a report with methodology and data status. If you need an analysis for a particular region or professional group that is not shown here, you can request it from us.
Job ad check
Up to this point this was a statistic about the market. It is also one about you: 402 of the 1,531 Operating Theatre Assistant (OTA)vacancies have been live for more than 90 days, and 1,002 say nothing at all about pay. Every one of them was written by someone.