Germany’s Healthcare Offices See Slight Increase in Staffing, Data Shows
According to the German Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), the number of people working in Germany’s healthcare offices, including external staff, rose by 1.3 percent to 26,655 by the end of 2024, compared to the previous year. This increase is attributed to the results of the regional healthcare personnel monitoring program.
The number of full-time equivalent employees stood at 21,745, a 1.3 percent rise from the previous year. The majority of the employees, 83 percent, had an open-ended contract, followed by 10 percent of civil servants and 7 percent of those with fixed-term contracts.
The proportion of high-qualified staff in healthcare offices rose to 51 percent by the end of 2024, with a significant variation across regions, ranging from 26 to 88 percent. The number of high-qualified staff increased by 335, or 2.5 percent, during the year.
The healthcare offices’ staff composition was 20 percent medical professionals, 54 percent specialist staff and 26 percent administrative personnel, as of the end of 2024. The number of medical professionals rose by 2.5 percent, while the administrative staff decreased by 2.9 percent, compared to the previous year.
The average age of the staff in healthcare offices was 47.6 years, with a significant variation across regions, ranging from 6 to 28 percent of staff under the age of 35 and from 18 to 47 percent of those aged 55 and over. The age distribution in healthcare offices was not significantly influenced by the region’s type, whether urban, semi-urban, or rural.
Women made up a significant proportion of the staff, with 82 percent of employees being female and 60 percent of these working part-time. The majority of the staff, 53 percent, worked part-time, while 47 percent worked full-time and 0.4 percent were employed on a minor scale.
The working areas of the staff in healthcare offices were diverse, with the largest proportion of work being in the fields of child and youth health, administration and social psychiatry and mental health, as of the end of 2024. For medical professionals, the largest proportion of work was in child and youth health, followed by the field of adult health assessments.