Looking for Talent in Times of Crisis – The Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Public Sector Job Openings

The current Covid-19 pandemic has tremendous effects on labour markets worldwide. While we observe a rapid change to work from home, an increase in unemployment is expected, too. This research article reports on results of a research project on the effect of the pandemic on the public sector labour market. We systematically study public sector job openings in Germany with a focus on the development of certain job types. For this purpose, we used the central German provider for e-recruiting in the public sector as a unique database that documents the current personnel demand. We comparatively analyse snapshots of this database using quantitative text analysis and descriptive statistics. Our results show that public institutions, besides a significant increase in work from home jobs, have a substantial demand for IT jobs, but that these IT vacancies do not have a focus on work from home technology.