The
global benchmark.
Benchmark of Germany as a chemical location against USA, China and the rest of Europe in regard to trend leadership, functional area developments and skill evolution pace.
Germany as a chemical location is leading in 5 out of 15 trends.*
Germany’s automation & robotics applications have enjoyed unprecedented success over the last years in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry. This brings the German chemical and pharmaceutical industry in an undisputed leading position for talent demand in the automation & robotics area, with ca. one in ten job postings demanding skills in this area.
In the field of 3D printing and additive manufacturing, too, the German chemical and pharmaceutical industry is in the lead in terms of demand for the relevant skills, just ahead of the USA.
Despite Germany’s leading position in demand for material sciences skills, its leading position is under pressure by the growth and investment of China. With every eight job posting demanding skills in material sciences, the German chemical and pharmaceutical industry is currently still slightly ahead of China (every tenth job postings).
The German chemical and pharmaceutical industry needs to catch up in data-driven trends. Demand for talents in the areas of digital sales (-7.6%), data science & analytics (-6.8%), machine learning & AI (-3.2%) and big data technologies (-2.4%) is far below the global average. The U.S. leads demand, even beyond the chemical and pharmaceutical sector, in all four trends, underpinning U.S. technology leadership in data technologies.
*Source: HRForecast data crawled from public sources (regions: Germany, EU, USA & China). Period analyzed: 01/2018 – 12/2019. Only data from the chemical industry was analyzed.
The German chemistry is well positioned in some trend areas, but is under increasing pressure from China. There is a need to catch up in data-driven and digital technologies.
Skill evolution benchmark
The skill requirements are changing rapidly.*
The workforce requirements are currently evolving at an unseen pace. Overall, there are significantly more occupations with increasing demand than occupations with decreasing demand in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry.
Note: While the overall number of skills and thus the complexity of the skill requirements increases, there are also skills that lose importance or are even replaced. Therefore, increasing skill requirements do not automatically mean that additional skills must always be learned.
*Source: HRForecast data crawled from public sources (regions: Germany, EU, USA & China). Period analyzed: 01/2018 – 12/2019. Only data from the chemical industry was analyzed.
Soft skill benchmark
Soft skills demand in 2019 increased by 34.5% compared to 2018.*
Despite increasing investments into digitization, automation and data-driven technologies, soft skills are becoming increasingly important in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry.
*Source: HRForecast data crawled from public sources (regions: Germany, EU, USA & China). Period analyzed: 01/2018 – 12/2019. Only data from the chemical industry was analyzed.
Impact of soft skills on the functional areas.
Share of soft skills in job postings 2019 vs 2018 (by functional area):
Most important soft skills.
The importance of soft skills on today’s working world can be emphasized by the fact, that the following ten soft skills account for more than 10% of the total skill demand – consisting of almost 6,000 examined skills – in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry. It is advisable that these skills are build and strengthened in all functional areas and also integrated into vocational and professional training and development.
Functional area benchmark
Administration is hit the hardest by digitization.*
*Source: HRForecast data crawled from public sources (regions: Germany, EU, USA & China). Period analyzed: 01/2018 – 12/2019. Only data from the chemical industry was analyzed.
35.9% of all job postings in the German chemical and pharmaceutical industry came from the administration area. This is a much higher demand compared to the other regions. At the same time, however, the German chemical-pharmaceutical industry also shows the largest drop in demand for administrative staff between 2018 and 2019 compared with the benchmark regions.
Shifting the shares
Technical functional areas such as IT, R&D and production are subject to the strongest growth, while the administration area is undergoing rapid decline in demand on the labor market.
Change of labor market demand by functional area (2019 vs 2018):
Share of job postings from the functional area administration (in 2019)
