Press release
Stepstone long-term analysis: Soft skills required in almost every second job

• Demand for soft skills in German job postings has risen significantly since 2019 – “reliability” has more than quadrupled
• Skills such as teamwork and flexibility are highly sought after
• AI jobs have firmly established themselves in the German job market, but the most desired profiles have changes since 2019

Düsseldorf, March 11th, 2026 – Teamwork, flexibility, and reliability are becoming increasingly important for employers. A long-term analysis of all jobs on Stepstone.de since 2019 shows that soft skills are now mentioned significantly more often as requirements in job vacancies than they were just a few years ago.
In 2025, soft skills were mentioned in 45% of all jobs on Stepstone.de, compared to just under a quarter (25%) in 2019. Reliability saw the biggest growth: in 2025, it is mentioned more than four times as often as in 2019 (+354%). Independence (+168%), flexibility (+150%), and teamwork (+138%) are also significantly more in demand than just a few years ago.

“In times of economic uncertainty, employers are increasingly looking for reliable and adaptable employees,” says Anna Wittich, Labor Market Researcher at The Stepstone Group. “The increased demand is noticeable across all occupational fields—from nursing and logistics to project management. Whether it’s shift work, changing locations, or hybrid work, being able to work reliably in a team and adapt to new conditions is crucial today. Professional qualifications remain important, but soft skills are increasingly becoming the decisive factor.”

Teamwork is the most sought-after soft skill overall: 40 percent of all job listings that mention soft skills explicitly require teamwork skills. This is followed by flexibility (26 percent), communication skills (22 percent), and reliability (20 percent). “With increasing automation, human skills are becoming noticeably more important. At the same time, the use of AI tools is also increasing in recruiting, which is leading to more optimized texts with greater standardization,” says Anna Wittich.

From first steps to systematic application: the AI job market is coming of age

The analysis also shows that AI professions have become firmly established in Germany’s job market. There is an increasing demand for skilled workers who can develop AI and implement it operationally in companies. After the boom years from 2021 to 2023, the absolute number of “AI jobs” stabilized in 2025 at a level slightly above that of 2019 (+12%). In this analysis, AI jobs are defined as all jobs that match one or more of over 40 search terms.

At the same time, the qualifications in demand are shifting significantly: traditional data- and platform-oriented skills such as “Internet of Things” (-70%), “Big Data” (-59%) and “Business Intelligence” (-27%) are losing importance, while skills related to the specific use of AI are growing rapidly. These include keywords that hardly existed in 2019, such as “MLOps,” the professional development and operation of AI systems, and “AI strategy,” i.e., the targeted integration of AI into business processes. Jobs in the field of generative AI have also become firmly established and represent particularly application-oriented skills, such as in “natural language processing (NLP)” (+337%) or in the use of modern AI frameworks such as “PyTorch” (+239%).

“It's no longer just about developing models, but about operating them reliably, integrating them into existing systems, and using them to add value. Roles such as AI engineer or MLOps specialist were barely defined a few years ago. Today, they have arrived on the job market as specialized profiles with measurable demand,” says Wittich. “At the same time, the decline in specialized job profiles shows that broad knowledge and a willingness to change are in demand in a rapidly changing field.”
In addition to IT, AI skills are now in particularly high demand in professions such as science, consulting, engineering, and marketing, which together account for more than three-quarters (80%) of all AI jobs.

About the analysis 
For the study, all job advertisements on Stepstone in Germany were analyzed from January 2019 to December 2025. The analysis determined how often employers mentioned AI skills or AI-related terms (e.g., machine learning, data science, big data, robotics) or soft skills (e.g., analytical thinking, creativity, flexibility) in the requirements that applicants must meet for a job.

About The Stepstone Group 
The Stepstone Group is a leading global digital recruitment platform that connects companies with the right talent and helps people find the right job. AI-driven job marketplaces and programmatic-powered marketing solutions connect more than 130 million job applications with about 130,000 employers every year. The Stepstone Group operates in more than 10 countries - including Stepstone in Germany, Appcast in the USA and Totaljobs in the UK. The company is headquartered in Düsseldorf, Germany and employs about 3,000 people worldwide. For more information: www.thestepstonegroup.com/english

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