Fewer hires, the same roadmap: planning tech teams for 2027

German employers are hiring cautiously: ifo's Employment Barometer stood at 95.5 in October 2026, and Destatis counts 0.5% fewer people in work than a year earlier. Bitkom reports that 97% of companies with IT positions still struggle to fill them, so a 2027 roadmap needs a staffing figure for each item that does not assume the hires will arrive.

What does the ifo barometer say about hiring plans?

On 28 October 2026 ifo reported that its Employment Barometer rose slightly in October to 95.5 points, up from 95.1 points in September. The index is published with 2015 = 100 and is seasonally adjusted, according to the time series file ifo released with it. It is built from about 9,500 monthly responses from firms in manufacturing, construction, wholesaling, retailing and services, who report their employment plans for the coming three months. It measures plans for all jobs, and ifo's release has no IT split.

Klaus Wohlrabe, head of surveys at ifo, said that companies are becoming somewhat more cautious about cutting jobs, but that the upturn still lacks the strength for a broad expansion of the workforce. The sectors differ in what they plan. Manufacturing worsened slightly compared with September, with further cuts planned especially in the automotive industry, while more hires are planned among makers of data processing equipment. Service providers are more inclined to create jobs, whereas trade continues to plan with fewer staff and construction shows a slight decrease in jobs.

Over a longer stretch, the file lists 92.3 for June 2026, 93.0 for July, 94.7 for August, 95.1 for September and 95.5 for October, so the index has risen four months in a row. Its last higher value is 95.8 for June 2024, which makes October the highest reading since June 2024. ifo's page does not say this. It is our reading of the series, and seasonally adjusted values can be revised.

The barometer records what firms intend to do, and it does not count hires that took place. The 95.5 sits below the base of 100, and ifo's release says trade still plans to make do with fewer staff and that manufacturing worsened slightly. For a buyer, the reading is a market that has stopped getting worse without yet getting better.

Is employment in Germany falling?

Destatis said on 30 October 2026 that, by its preliminary calculations, about 45.60 million people living in Germany were in work in September 2026. That is 4,000 fewer than in August on a seasonally adjusted basis, and 211,000 (0.5%) fewer than in September 2025. Destatis counts people by where they live, whether they work in Germany or abroad.

The Destatis release on the second quarter, published on 18 August 2026, gives the sector detail. Total employment was 212,000 (0.5%) lower than in the second quarter of 2025. Services employment fell by 27,000 (0.1%), which Destatis describes as the first noticeable fall since the Corona crisis, and in information and communication it fell by 24,000 (1.5%). The release gives the sector total with no split for software development, and we found no figure for IT occupations alone.

A second publisher measures something different. The Federal Employment Agency's October 2026 release puts employment subject to social insurance in August 2026 at 34.87 million, 45,000 lower than a year earlier, although up 14,000 on July after seasonal adjustment. The same release says that demand for labour remains weak. It also reports 654,000 vacancies registered with the agency, 31,000 more than a year earlier. Fewer people in work and more registered vacancies appear together in the same release, and the sources do not explain the combination. These are separate measures with different bases, so we do not add them together.

If hiring is slow, why do IT roles stay open?

A weak labour market overall tells a single firm little about one open role. We cover the national gap and the obstacles Bitkom lists in our article on Germany's IT skills gap. The full Bitkom study report adds figures that bear on planning. It rests on two representative telephone surveys of 853 and 602 companies with at least three employees, run in calendar weeks 18 to 25 of 2026 with a stated tolerance of plus or minus 4%.

In Bitkom's 2026 study, 78% of companies see a shortage of IT specialists now, against 85% in 2025, and 76% expect it to get worse, against 79% in 2025. Only 8% expect it to shrink. The easing is slight, so for a planner the shortage remains the expected condition for 2027 and not a problem about to pass.

The study also describes what companies do about it. Among the 319 companies with IT positions, 59% say applicants' salary expectations do not match their qualifications, and 48% say the expectations do not fit the existing pay structure. Of those companies, 18% rely more on external IT specialists and 19% use more AI to cover their need. Some 32% of them expect AI to lead to cuts in IT jobs, and 65% do not.

The last point has a small base. Of the 107 companies that have cut or expect to cut IT jobs through AI, 35% say AI replaces vacancies for which they cannot or do not want to find anyone. Bitkom itself says the result needs cautious reading. We mention it because it points to one way a roadmap can get smaller without a decision: the role stays empty and the work is dropped or absorbed. That is our reading, not Bitkom's.

Bitkom is a trade body for the digital industry, and every figure above comes from its study, so we attribute them to Bitkom and have no second source for them.

How should you size a 2027 roadmap when hiring is uncertain?

This section is our addition. The sources do not give a method for it, and it is not a forecast. The sources describe a market where few firms are adding staff and those that do still struggle to fill roles. A roadmap built on a hiring plan therefore carries the hiring risk, and the check below is a way to see that risk before it shows up as a missed date.

The first step is to list each roadmap item for 2027 with the roles it needs and the months of work each role adds up to. The second is to mark every role as filled, open or at risk. For open roles, write down how long they have been open and how many applications they have drawn, bearing in mind that Bitkom says 31% of companies with IT positions get practically no applications. The third step turns the open roles into a gap in person-months for each quarter, which gives each item a size that a budget discussion can use.

For each gap, the fourth step is to choose one route and a date: hire, move the item later, cut its scope, or bring in an outside team. Write down the date by which a hire must have started for the plan to hold, because that date turns a hope into a test. The fifth step is to re-check the plan when the numbers move. If ifo's barometer falls back or Destatis shows a further drop in employment, we would expect candidates to be easier to find, and if they rise, we would expect more competition for them. That is our reading, and none of the sources makes the link for IT.

Three dates matter for that re-check, as of 2 November 2026. The latest ifo barometer is the October one, published on 28 October 2026, and the November value was not on ifo's survey results page on 2 November, so we did not find its release date. Destatis says its detailed results for the third quarter of 2026 appear on 18 November 2026. The latest Bitkom study on IT specialists is the one of 3 September 2026.

If your gap is a whole team of several people, the choice in step 4 is where an outside team comes in. On our site we describe what a dedicated team covers: a team that works only on your product, a team lead from our side, and a demo every week. How we work sets out the steps from the first call to the first shipped piece of work.

What we could not confirm

ifo's page does not say that 95.5 is the highest since 2024, which comes from our reading of the time series file, and we did not find the release date of ifo's November barometer. The ifo barometer has no IT split, and the Destatis release gives information and communication as one sector with no software split, so we found no 2026 employment figure for IT occupations alone.

We found no source on how large firms' 2027 IT roadmaps or budgets are, and the roadmap framing in this article is ours. We also do not know why registered vacancies rose while employment fell, since none of the sources gives a reason. Bitkom's figures have no second source, because they come from a trade body's own surveys.