International Journal of Information Management Data Insights 1 (2021) 100014

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

International Journal of Information Management Data

Insights
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jjimei

Looking for Talent in Times of Crisis – The Impact of the Covid-19

Pandemic on Public Sector Job Openings ✩
Julian Koch a,∗, Ralf Plattfaut b, Ingo Kregel c
a
Department of Applied Business and Technology Management, South Westphalia University of Applied Sciences, Hagen, Germany
b
Department of Electrical Engineering, South Westphalia University of Applied Sciences, Soest, Germany
c
Faculty of Business Studies, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Dortmund, Dortmund, Germany

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Keywords: The current Covid-19 pandemic has tremendous effects on labour markets worldwide. While we observe a rapid
Covid-19 change to work from home, an increase in unemployment is expected, too. This research article reports on results
job market of a research project on the effect of the pandemic on the public sector labour market. We systematically study
quantitative analysis
public sector job openings in Germany with a focus on the development of certain job types. For this purpose, we
text analysis
used the central German provider for e-recruiting in the public sector as a unique database that documents the
public sector
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.

1. Introduction ber of new infections throughout Germany exceeded 10,000 within one
day for the first time which indicated the second wave. On November 2,
The Covid-19 (Coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2) pandemic has, as of Octo- a second nationwide lockdown began, with renewed restrictions in the
ber 2020, a massive impact on both the number of jobs and the way retail, social, and recreational sectors [Bundesministerium für Gesund-
we work. Since the appearance of the novel corona virus Sars-CoV-2 heit 2021].
in China in early January 2020, the virus has spread worldwide. The However, countries like Germany, which reacted in time with dras-
WHO classified the spread of the corona virus on 11 March 2020 as a tic measures, are apparently getting through the corona crisis compara-
pandemic (i.e., a global epidemic, [World Health Organization 2020]). bly better [Bennhold, 4 April 2020, Fairless, 2020, Wieler et al., 2020].
It has been confirmed as of September 2020 that more than 31 million In Germany as in an increasing number of countries, public and eco-
people are infected with the corona virus and more than 1 million peo- nomic life was shut down to slow down the spread of the coronavirus.
ple have died in connection with the virus [European Centre for Disease A large number of organisations switched as many jobs as possible into
Prevention and Control 2020]. At the end of January 2020, there was working from home [Fadinger and Schymik, 2020, Brynjolfsson et al.,
the first confirmed infection with Corona virus in Germany. On month 2020]. These changes resulted in many challenges both for workers
later, the states of Baden-Württemberg and North Rhine-Westphalia also adapting to their new environment and for organisations to technically
reported the first confirmed cases, with other states following by mid- enable the employees to work remotely. But it also led to cancelled or at
March 2020. In early March 2020, the first deaths within Germany oc- least changed recruiting activities [Bartik et al., 2020, Montenovo et al.,
curred in North Rhine-Westphalia and the number of infections rose to 2020].
more than 1,000 nationwide. At the same time, a lockdown began that On the one hand, we observe job losses around the world due to
included the closure of retail stores, theatres, sports venues, and concert the pandemic. On a global level, gross domestic product is expected
halls, as well as widespread contact bans. Universities, schools, and day- to shrink by 3%, “much worse than during the 2008-9 financial crisis”
care centres were also closed. Checks had inner-European borders were [International Monetary Fund 2020]. The International Labour Orga-
implemented together with wide-ranging travel and entry bans. At the nization (ILO) estimates nearly half of the global workforce in danger
beginning of May 2020, the German states began to gradually ease the to lose their livelihoods and hundreds of millions of companies con-
restrictions [Desson et al., 2020]. However, in October 2020, the num- fronted with bankruptcy [International Labour Organization 2020]. In

✩
This research did not receive any grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
∗
Corresponding Author: Julian Koch, South Westphalia University of Applied Sciences, Hagen, Germany.
E-mail address: [email protected] (J. Koch).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jjimei.2021.100014
Received 15 December 2020; Received in revised form 15 April 2021; Accepted 16 April 2021
2667-0968/© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
J. Koch, R. Plattfaut and I. Kregel International Journal of Information Management Data Insights 1 (2021) 100014

the United States, within the first six weeks since President Trump de- could not be filled in the fourth quarter of 2019 [Bundesagentur für Ar-
clared a national emergency, a total of 30.3 million newly filed unem- beit 2020]. This was 55,000 more than in the third quarter of 2019 and
ployment claims were registered [U.S. Department of Labor 2020]. Sim- 48,000 fewer than in the same period of 2018 [Bundesagentur für Arbeit
ilar retractions on the job market are already observable in Europe: A 2020]. Demand for staff had fallen, particularly among larger companies
recent analysis by McKinsey & Company sees 59 million jobs at risk in with more than 250 employees. In contrast, demand for staff remained
the European Union and the United Kingdom [Chinn et al., 2020]. high in the SME and service sectors [Bundesagentur für Arbeit 2020].
On the other hand, we see that more and more people work from
home [Waizenegger et al., 2020, Venkatesh, 2020]. Organisations re- 2.2. Covid-19 Pandemic in IS Research and Related Fields
act on the Covid-19 pandemic with investments into information tech-
nology (IT) [Dwivedi et al., 2020]. Video conference solutions are in Covid-19 represents a massive challenge to the medical systems of
huge demand, as schools and universities invest in distance learning countries worldwide. It has been compared to natural disasters that ef-
techniques and companies rely on working from home and have to can- fect both societies and organisations [Sakurai and Chughtai, 2020]. Un-
cel business trips [Neate, 31 March 2020, He et al., 2021, Iivari et al., derstandably, Covid-19 also triggered a large wave of pandemic-related
2020]. The usage of the internet changed and simultaneously intensi- medical research. The world health organisation (WHO) listed 4,079
fied [Koeze and Popper, 7 April 2020]. To avoid network problems, registered clinical trials as of July 05 [HeiGIT 2020]. The huge effects
regulators in Europe urged providers of the most traffic-causing online of Covid-19 were also reflected in research calls in many scientific dis-
applications such as Netflix and Amazon to temporarily decrease their ciplines, not only including medical domains. Special issues explicitly
used streaming quality and bandwidth [Kang et al., 26 March 2020]. related to Covid-19 have been announced from outlets such as Interna-
In this article, we evaluate in how far the Covid-19 pandemic had tional Review of Economics & Finance, Risk Analysis, Journal of Oper-
impact on public sector job openings in Germany. We specifically aim ations Management, Production and Operations Management, and De-
at answering the following research questions: cision Sciences Journal. Multiple articles deal with contact-tracing apps
RQ1: How did the German public sector job market react on the which try to predict, observe, and minimise the spreading of a virus
Covid-19 pandemic? [Rowe et al., 2020, Riemer et al., 2020, Urbaczewski and Lee, 2020].
RQ2: How did the German public sector job market for IT profes- Another area that is studied with regards to Covid-19 is the working
sionals react on the Covid-19 pandemic? from home or remote e-working [Dwivedi et al., 2020, Iivari et al.,
With these research questions we aim at analysing the current state. 2020, Barnes, 2020, Sein, 2020], something that is also highlighted by
However, in line with prior suggestions [Kar and Dwivedi, 2020], we other studies on the impact of Covid-19 on IS research and education
also want to move beyond this descriptive analysis of “what is” and [van der Aalst et al., 2020]. Studies on the effects of Covid-19 on the
thus discuss implications for theory that might be observable in public labour market focus predominantly on survey, e.g., using the Nielsen
sector job markets in general when exogenous shocks occur. panel [Coibion et al., 2020]. Next to the effect on the labour market,
To answer our two research questions, we build upon a dataset of all the public sector is furthermore also challenged by several additional
public sector job openings in Germany that we collected in August 2019 aspects such as public order, effective crisis communication, and citizen
(“time point 0”) through advanced web mining using robotic process engagement [Chen et al., 2020, Hodder, 2020].
automation (RPA). We repeated this data collection weekly since the
start of the Covid-19 crisis (March 2020) and compare the results both 2.3. Hypotheses
with our time point 0 and over time until September 2020.
The remainder of the article is as follows. First, we present some the- The worldwide development also leaves its mark on Germany. The
oretical background on the Covid-19 pandemic in the IS domain and hy- social distancing measures led to the lockdown of most businesses for
potheses on its effect on public sector job openings. Second, we explain weeks and endangered a large number of jobs. The unemployment rate
our research methodology with respect to data collection and analysis. increased from 5.1% in March to 6.4% in August [Bundesagentur für
Third, we describe our findings. We end with a concluding discussion. Arbeit 2020]. Foreseeing this effect, the German government reacted.
With the help of subsidising short-time work (“Kurzarbeit”), the gov-
2. Literature Review and Hypotheses ernment hoped to ease the ascent of unemployment just like during the
financial crisis ten years ago. In early May 2020, the Bundesrat (Fed-
2.1. German Job Market until the Corona Pandemic eral Council) approved numerous draft laws of the Federal Government
in this context during the crisis. Among other things, corona tests and
The long-term trend in new jobs created in Germany had been posi- reporting requirements for laboratories and health authorities were ex-
tive for more than 10 years. Since 2007, a total of 5 million additional panded on a large scale [Bundesagentur für Arbeit 2020]. Also, numer-
jobs have been created in Germany. In 2018, there were nearly 580,000 ous social benefits were expanded, including short-time work, parental
new jobs and in 2019, nearly 450,000 new jobs [Bundesagentur für and unemployment benefits. During the first two months, applications
Arbeit 2021]. Before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, at least for these short-time work subsidies were received for already 10.1 mil-
200,000 additional jobs were expected to be created in Germany in 2020 lion employees, whereas during the complete year of 2009 applications
[European Commission 2019]. The number of unemployed in Germany for only 3.3 million employees were registered [Bundesagentur für Ar-
before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020 had fallen by beit 2020]. In mid-May 2020, in connection with the ongoing corona
30,000 to 2.396 million compared with January, implying an unem- development, the Federal Government adopted the law to protect the
ployment rate of 5.3 percent and 23,000 more unemployed than in the population in the event of an epidemic situation of national importance
same period in 2019 [Bundesagentur für Arbeit 2020]. Possible effects [Bundesministerium für Gesundheit 2020]. The aim of the law was to
due to the consequences of the coronavirus outbreak are explicitly not provide the best possible protection for people at particular risk from in-
yet included here. The seasonal decline in February was thus stronger fection with the corona virus and to gain a better insight into the course
year-on-year, which is attributable to the somewhat weaker economy in of the epidemic. To this end, numerous restrictions and limitations were
Germany at this time. Economists had last revised their growth forecasts imposed, focusing on social distancing in the workplace. The core of the
for the German economy downwards accordingly in December 2019 law was that the almost 400 public services were the linchpin in the
[Institut der deutschen Wirtschaft Köln e. V. 2019]. In contrast to the fight against the coronavirus. The modernisation of the public health
slight decline in the overall supply of jobs, Germany was already strug- service will therefore be supported with a funding programme totalling
gling with the consequences of the shortage of skilled workers before 50 million euros. In mid-July, an enormous relaxation of infection pro-
the Corona pandemic began. Nationwide, around 1.41 million positions tection is again in force throughout Germany [Han et al., 2020]. Nearly

2
 J. Koch, R. Plattfaut and I. Kregel International Journal of Information Management Data Insights 1 (2021) 100014

all retail and gastronomy businesses have been allowed to open again openings for doctors, nurses, laboratory staff, and other clinical pro-
as normal. For example, visits to nursing homes and larger family cele- fessionals [Shulzhenko and Holmgren, 2020]. Early during the pan-
brations were possible again. demic, the media was reporting on volunteer recruiting of medical pro-
Based on existing literature and observations of the current devel- fessionals as well as of fast-tracks for medical students (e.g., [Kottasová,
opment we can hypothesise that the Covid-19 pandemic has and will 2020, Noveck et al., 2020]). Several studies point to the unmistakably
have a large impact on the German job market. Even though we do not higher demand for healthcare professionals during the Covid-19 pan-
expect a strong decrease in existing public sector jobs, we hypothesise a demic [Liu et al., 2020, Fuchs, 2020, Cutler, 2020]. In April 2020, the
reduction in job openings in line with the observations from the private German government indicated that it would support the national health
sector [Bundesagentur für Arbeit 2020]. We assume that our data shows sector with a total of ten billion euros, with a focus on the public health
that with the Covid-19 pandemic less positions are opened and public service, but also on hospitals and medical research [Hallam, 2020].
sector hiring slows down. Therefore, we propose H1 as follows: Therefore, we expect that new positions relevant to the health sector
will be created by public institutions to respond to the pandemic. Based
(H1) The total number of job openings will be reduced over the course of
on this, we hypothesise to see a rise in demand for healthcare profes-
the pandemic
sionals:
We know from public responses to the pandemic that in most coun-
(H1) Especially at the start of the pandemic, recruitment for healthcare
tries people are encouraged to work from home (WFH) when possible
professionals will increase
[Carillo et al., 2021]. However, several studies indicate that the gen-
eral trend toward WFH, which began in the private sector years before Following the arguments for H4, we also expect a rise in IT and dig-
the pandemic outbreak with the introduction of flexible work models, italisation positions in the public sector. Prior research has shown that
had barely taken hold in the public sector and public administration organisations reacted on the Covid-19 pandemic with investments into
at the time of the Covid-19 pandemic [Melian and Zebib, 2020, 46, IT [Dwivedi et al., 2020]. Especially video conference solutions rose
Palumbo, 2020]. We therefore assume that the underlying conditions in demand as schools and universities invest in distance learning tech-
(remote access to IT systems, equipment with portable computers, etc.) niques [Neate, 31 March 2020, He et al., 2021, Iivari et al., 2020]. More-
are not yet in place or only sparsely. [Office for National Statistics 2020]. over, the usage of the internet changed and simultaneously intensified
From this, we infer that we should expect longer turnaround times in [Koeze and Popper, 7 April 2020]. We assume that these rising invest-
the recruitment processes for the positions studied due to the Covid- ments into IT also lead to a rising demand for IT professionals in the
19 pandemic. This is particularly the case in the processes that require public sector. Hence, we hypothesise the following:
a high level of communication intensity, such as the applicant manage-
ment process in connection with applicant pre-selection, interviews, and (H1) The share of new IT/digitalisation positions among all positions will
applicant assessment. Therefore, we propose our second hypothesis: rise during the pandemic

(H1) The pandemic is explicitly mentioned to account for longer process- Moreover, these new IT/digitalisation positions will be, especially in
ing times during the crisis the beginning of the pandemic, less in completely new technologies re-
quiring corresponding future skills such as artificial intelligence, user
Building on H2, we moreover assume that WFH possibilities and cor- experience, blockchain, or internet of things [Kirchherr et al., 2018,
responding technology is increasingly mentioned in public sector job Carter et al., 2011] and more in maintenance and support of existing
openings. First, we base this assumption on the announced sales and systems as well as support for WFH technology. As such, H7 and H8 are
revenue figures of suppliers of WFH technology. Second, past research proposed as follows:
shows that job security is an important factor for public sector employ-
ees [Clark and Postel-Vinay, 2009, Lewis and Frank, 2002]. Especially (H1) Especially at the beginning of the pandemic, public organisations
in times of the pandemic, WFH possibilities can signal a higher degree will focus their IT professionals recruiting on support and mainte-
of job security. Third, WFH has become a necessity to operate during nance of IT
the pandemic [Waizenegger et al., 2020]. We therefore propose the fol- (H2) Considering H3, the positions that allow home office and/or men-
lowing hypothesis H3: tion working-from-home (WFH) technology will increase particu-
larly strongly within the group of IT jobs (H6)
(H1) During the pandemic, positions allowing for home office and/or
mention working-from-home (WFH) technology will increase
3. Methodology
The pandemic led to an increased willingness to digitalise and auto-
mate processes and services over all industries [World Economic Forum The application of diverse analytics methods of big semi structured
2020]. In this context, the German state invested in the expansion of data for the purpose of behavioural analysis of the public sector, es-
digital infrastructure and in public sector digitisation initiatives. One ex- pecially based on time series data, is a scientifically established field
ample is the troubling Online Access Act ("Onlinezugangsgesetz", OZG) [Grover and Kar, 2017, Chintalapudi et al., 2021]. In this research
of April 2017, which obliges the federal states to offer their adminis- project, we employ a quantitative text analysis approach to achieve our
trative services electronically via administrative portals by 2022 and to research objective and test our hypotheses. Especially when analysing
connect them to a digital portal network. The economic stimulus pack- unstructured, large amounts of data by means of information extraction,
age launched in June 2020 to combat the consequences of Covid-19 now data mining or knowledge discovery, one should explain the context, i.e.
provides for the additional investment of three billion euros for OZG’s be decisive why a found phenomenon occurs [Kar and Dwivedi, 2020,
implementation [World Economic Forum 2020]. It is obvious that the Kumar et al., 2021]. We build upon data collected in August 2019 and
partly massive investments of the German state to maintain service de- contrast this to data continuously collected since the beginning of the
livery and specially to accelerate the implementation of service digital- “lockdown” as a reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic. Figure 1 provides
isation in the public sector should also be used to nationwide build up a brief overview of our methodology which is detailed in the following.
human resources. Hence, H4 is proposed as follows:
3.1. Data Collection
(H1) New positions (except job offers in the health sector) will be created
during the pandemic to specifically react on the new circumstances
Data was collected from the Interamt.de website. Interamt is the of-
Closely related to H4 we especially expect new positions in public ficial central job platform for the public sector in Germany and claims
healthcare. We expect public administrations to create additional job to be the largest provider of job ads in this field. It provides e-recruiting

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J. Koch, R. Plattfaut and I. Kregel International Journal of Information Management Data Insights 1 (2021) 100014

Baseline Situation Crisis Situation Figure 1. Research Approach: Data Collec-

tion and Analysis

Sample “Time Time Time Time

Point 0” Point 1 Point 2 Point 3

All open positions 28/03/20 … 09/05/20 … 23/05/20 … 02/08/20 … 19/09/20

on Interamt.de
as of 02/08/19
Continuous weekly data collection

Comparative analysis of collected

texts and metadata

services for public administrations and includes about 50,000 ads per analysing job advertisement data [Debortoli et al., 2014, Aken et al.,
year from federal, state, and local institutions. Typical job providers 2010]. In order to generate relevant research results in a comprehen-
are ministries, state offices, city governments, and public sector associ- sive way, a combination of keyword searches is applied. A keyword list
ations. To facilitate data collection, we employed an RPA software bot. is created for each of the hypotheses H2-H8. Based on these lists, every
This bot was developed to simulate human access to the websites to job position that includes a keyword is marked as having the correspond-
avoid being locked out by technical crawling detection functionalities. ing feature [Chintalapudi et al., 2021, Aken et al., 2010, Gardiner et al.,
The bot has been used for an initial research project in August 2019, 2018]. These markers are used to calculate frequency of the features.
when all 6,661 job advertisements open by this time were collected from Our collected data will allow us to analyse the development of these
Interamt. This sample will be considered our baseline (or data point 0). frequencies over time. In order to validate the keyword collection as
Based on our learnings we then optimised the bot and started a data col- a central selection tool with regard to suitability, consistency and com-
lection from Interamt on March 28, 2020 following the announcement pleteness, we proceeded in two steps. Since we assume a domain-specific
of a country-wide shut down by the German chancellor Angela Merkel nomenclature in the public sector, we used the specifications for job de-
on March 22. The bot is started every second day and collects all job scriptions that are updated annually by the Federal Office of Administra-
openings from Interamt. Every Saturday, the data of the week is consol- tion (Bundesverwaltungsamt) [Bundesverwaltungsamt 2020]. Within
idated with closed and newly opened job positions. We have continued the German public sector, these serve as the basis for the classification
this data collection and thus are now able to analyse 26 weeks in 2020 and remuneration of employees according to collective agreements. In a
to describe the developing impact of the pandemic on public sector job first step, we used the catalogues for employees in information technol-
openings. ogy to extract corresponding job description terms based on the job de-
scriptions presented there with explicit job characteristics and job eval-
3.2. Pre-Processing uations [Bundesverwaltungsamt 2020, Bundesverwaltungsamt 2018].
In a second step, we discussed, eliminated, added to, modified and
Collected job advertisements are saved in text format together with refined the collection of terms. This controlled opinion-forming process
their metadata and pre-processed before the data analysis: HTML tags, ran for three cycles before we made a final human decision on the neces-
URLs, and e-mail addresses as well as disclaimers and imprints in the sary terms. Table 1 shows the German keywords used and the associated
footer of the job descriptions are removed using regular expressions quantities in conjunction with the mapped English terms.
[Batra et al., 2021]. The German pre-processing of the texts differs For H2 and H4 this list includes “Corona”, “Covid-19”, and “SARS-
from the English pre-processing, as there are special characters with CoV-2” as the virus and corresponding illness. Where there was a match
umlauts that must first be converted. To do this, the German umlauts within the description text of the vacancy notice, an additional manual
are normalised and all special characters, such as non-alphabetic char- screening for H4 was carried out to determine whether the vacancy was
acters, question marks, and bullets, are also removed. Pre-processing a job created specifically because of the pandemic. Coding and quali-
also includes normalisation of alphanumeric data, removal of punctu- tative assignment were accomplished in a one-step process by a single
ation marks and numbers, normalisation of spaces, and conversion to researcher. The job advertisements had an average of 254 words (in the
lowercase. unadjusted state). Therefore, it was possible for the researcher to quickly
We evaluated several German stop word lists. Both NLTK and Scikit- and unambiguously assess whether a job advertisement arose from the
Learn as often used standards for text analysis have built-in sets or lists of Covid-19 pandemic - i.e., explicitly refers to the pandemic situation in
German stop words that serve as a set of words that we clean in our data terms of content - or whether a job advertisement uses the keywords
[Pedregosa et al., 2011]. Hence, we use both NLTK and Scikit-Learn one elsewhere, e.g., to justify delayed processing procedures in the appli-
by one to get the best result [Bird et al., 2009, Loper and Bird, 2002]. cation process or response times. For H2, an additional validation was
Subsequently, we use the German Snowball Stemmer for German stem- carried out to see if the terms “additional”, “expanded”, “extended” in
ming to remove word prefixes and suffixes [Bird, 2006]. Finally, we combination with "processing time", "response time", "reply time", "pro-
employ the spaCy library for lemmatisation to break the words down cessing time" or "delays in the process" could be found within the same
into their basic forms [ExplosionAI GmbH 2021]. body text section in the "organisational information " section of the job
advertisement. In German public administrations, working from home
3.3. Data Analysis
(ad H3) works in two different models. First, employees can have a per-
manent workplace at home (telework, “Telearbeit”). Second, employees
The collected text is analysed by using quantitative text analyses that
can be allowed to work remotely at selected times (remote work, mobile
are the most frequently cited methods in the academic literature for

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J. Koch, R. Plattfaut and I. Kregel International Journal of Information Management Data Insights 1 (2021) 100014

Table 1
Keyword mapping from German to English

(Additional) identified
positions in Combined
English Translation German Keyword Sample

H3 WFH Telework TELEARBEIT 4339

Remote work MOBILES ARBEITEN 3763
Home office HOME OFFICE 2000
Working from home HEIMARBEIT 693
Other keywords with less than 90 identified additional positions include Skype, Zoom, Webex, etc.

H5 Health Doctor ARZT∗ 2954

Health insurance KRANKENKASS∗ 1116
Medicine MEDIZIN∗ 159
Care & Health PFLEGE∗ & ∗ GESUNDHEIT 142
Health∗ GESUNDHEIT∗ 1 125
Hospital KRANKENHAUS∗ 84
Other keywords with less than 20 identified additional positions include pharma∗ , clinic, etc.
∗
H6 IT Informatics INFORMATIK∗ 7004
Information technology INFORMATIONSTECHN∗ 3932
Software develop∗ SOFT WAREENT WICKL∗ 1370
Integrat∗ & system∗ INTEGRIERT∗ " & "SYSTEM∗ 1347
IT system management IT-SYSTEMMANAGEMENT 1230
Other keywords with less than 90 identified additional positions include application development, system integration, etc.

H7 IT-Ops IT infrastructure IT-INFRASTRUKT∗ 4613

IT support IT-SUPPORT∗ 2089
IT processes IT-PROZESSE∗ 1207
SAP administration SAP" & "ADMINISTR∗ 1086
∗
Data maintenance DATENPFLEG∗ 566
IT security IT" & "SECURITY 372
Other keywords with less than 60 identified additional positions include helpdesk, service desk, problem management, etc.

H8 VPN VPN 869

WFH-Tech Remote access software FERNWARTUNG∗ & "SOFTWARE 652
Virtual teams VIRTUELL∗ & "TEAMS 621
Other keywords with less than 30 identified additional positions include Skype, Zoom, Webex, etc.

Keywords were iteratively ordered based on number of uniquely identified positions. For each keyword we calculated additional positions identified on top
of those identified by higher-rank keywords.
1
In the data analysis, terminology relating only to employees’ health benefits was filtered out and not taken into account.

work1 , “Mobiles Arbeiten”). Based on these two keywords and corre- To analyse the development over time we use simple regression anal-
sponding synonyms as well as WFH technologies (such as Skype, Zoom, ysis and present corresponding graphs. Moreover, we take three strik-
Webex, etc.) a keyword list was compiled (see Table 1). With regards ing points in the development of Covid-19 in Germany and compare the
to jobs for healthcare professionals (ad H5), we created keywords based state at these time points with time point 0 (2 August 2019). Time point
on a differentiation between healthcare payers and providers. Payers 1 is set at 9 May, approximately when the Corona Protection Ordinance
are health insurances while providers include inpatient care (hospitals), was largely implemented in an executive capacity [77]. In March, Ger-
outpatient care (doctors), nursing or geriatric care, or pharmacists. To many enacted a comprehensive set of measures, such as the "restriction
identify IT jobs (ad H6), we used keywords based on vocational train- of social contacts": Among other things, a minimum distance in public
ing and university courses. As such, we focused on computer science spaces of at least 1.5 meters was introduced, the stay in public spaces
and informatics, information technology, and software development and was only allowed alone or with another person of the own household.
added further related keywords to the list, e.g., application development Catering and numerous other service establishments were closed. With
or system integration. the May 2020 decision, the federal states were given extensive auton-
To assess hypotheses H7 and H8 we looked for specific keywords omy to relax the measures now further on their own. At the same time,
within the identified IT jobs. As such, job positions here require to be it was decided for the first time at the beginning of May that stricter in-
marked as IT jobs (matching corresponding keywords from the list cre- fection control measures would apply in counties or independent cities
ated for H6) as well as other keywords specifically created for H7 and with a particularly high incidence. A few weeks later, restrictions in
H8. The list for H7 (IT operations) originated in both ITIL processes Germany were further tightened with the Second Covid-19 Population
(e.g., IT support, helpdesk, service desk) and other operative tasks (e.g., Protection Act [Bundesministerium für Gesundheit 2020] (time point 2,
SAP administration). The list for H8 (WFH-technology) includes selected 23 May). The last time point is exactly one year after our time point 0
technology for WFH. Most prominently, this is remote access software, and at a time when the existing corona protection regulation has been
software for virtual teams and virtual private networks (VPN) in gen- largely softened. (2 August 2020).
eral. Other software such as Skype, Zoom, or WebEx led to only very
few additional matches. 4. Results

In total, we collected 33,643 unique job postings. Out of these, 6,661

were collected in August 2019 and 26,982 were collected from March
1
In this context, mobile work is a special term from German labour law. Mo- to September 2020. In all weekly samples, the number of open positions
bile work can be understood as working from home (or anywhere), but without is between 5,276 and 8,324.
certain technical and legal conditions. In general, it is easier for organizations Regarding our first hypothesis, we could observe a gradual reduc-
to allow mobile work than to offer permanent workplaces at home. tion of the number of open positions at the beginning of the pandemic.

5
J. Koch, R. Plattfaut and I. Kregel International Journal of Information Management Data Insights 1 (2021) 100014

Figure 2. Analysis of hypothesis H1: Open positions

over time

1600 Figure 3. Analysis of hypothesis H1: Newly opened

job advertisements over time
1400

1200

1000

800

600

400

200

0
13 18 23 28 33 38
| | | | | |
23.03 27.04 01.06 06.07 10.08 14.09

However, beginning with the first harsh legislator reactions (time point Regarding H3, we could observe that in in the original data set (time
1), we can see an increase in open job positions. With the relaxations point 0), only 15.1% of the positions mentioned WFH. This share in-
of the restrictions (time point 3) this number arrived at a stable plateau creased significantly and comparably steadily to 37.9% in time point 3
with a small downwards trend. Figure 2 shows this development over (see Figure 6).
time. Next, Figure 3 shows only the newly opened job ads over time. We were able to identify only a few positions that were created
To test the other hypotheses H2-H8, we identified the frequency of specifically to deal with the pandemic and that were not explicitly re-
job advertisement features based on the described keyword lists. With lated to the health sector in terms of content (ad H4). Most positions did
regards to H2, we could identify 1896 job advertisements that pre- not include texts such as “To fight the ongoing coronavirus pandemic,
pared potential applicants for longer processing times and mentioned the city of x is looking for”. While the corresponding curve shows a
the Covid-19 pandemic. As was to be expected, the corresponding rel- maximum during the height of the pandemic in Germany, the low pro-
ative frequency has increased over the period of the pandemic (see portion of jobs (less than 3% of all jobs at maximum) allows for no real
Figure 4). conclusions (see Figure 7).
To further investigate on our hypothesis H2 we analysed the duration Building on this, we can see a significant increase in healthcare posi-
between initial job posting and announced application deadline (e.g., tions (ad H5), especially at the beginning. However, this number is nor-
“please send your application until deadline”, Figure 5). This can give malising over time towards the reference point in time 0 (see Figure 8).
us insights whether public sector organisations account for a potentially The development is clearer for IT positions (ad H6) with a signifi-
longer processing time and, thus, reduce the time for the applicants to cant increase from 30.19% to 40.14%. While in August 2019 3 out of
prepare their documents. 10 positions were IT positions, this number increased to 5-6 out of 10
The average application period at time point 0 was 23 days. This ap- positions in time of the Corona crisis (see Figure 9). It will become in-
plication period is reducing with the pandemic. Apparently, while some teresting whether the dip in the last observed week (calendar week 38)
job openings now warn applicants that processing times of their applica- is an outlier or the return to a pre-pandemic state.
tions might be longer (see above), applicants are expected to send their A comparable increase can be seen with regards to IT operations po-
applications faster. Through this, organisations could ensure that the sitions. During the pandemic, the German public sector is looking for
total time between job opening and hiring does not change that much. more IT operations than IT change positions. Compared with the prior-

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J. Koch, R. Plattfaut and I. Kregel International Journal of Information Management Data Insights 1 (2021) 100014

Figure 4. Analysis of hypothesis H2: Longer processing

H2: Longer processing times due to pandemic
times due to pandemic

Abs. Rel. p

t0 0 0% n/a

t1 150 2.83% 0.00

t2 290 4.76% 0.00

t3 750 9.35% 0.00

Abs. = Absolute number

of occurrences
Rel. = Relative
proportion of
occurrences
p = Significance of
difference to t0

Additional analyses to test hypothesis H2 Figure 5. Additional analyses to test hypothesis H2

Days Std. p
betwee dev.
n job
posting
and
deadlin
e
t0 23.14 8.07 n/a

t1 22.05 6.58 0.00

t2 25.11 13.41 0.00

t3 18.06 9.01 0.00

Abs. = Absolute number | | | | | |

of occurrences 23.03 27.04 01.06 06.07 10.08 14.09
Rel. = Relative
proportion of
occurrences
p = Significance of
difference to t0
Figure 6. Analysis of hypothesis H3: WFH mentioned
H3: WFH mentioned

Abs. Rel. p

t0 1007 15.11% n/a

t1 1211 22.92% 0.00

t2 1921 31.54% 0.00

t3 3039 37.90% 0.00

Abs. = Absolute number

of occurrences
Rel. = Relative
proportion of
occurrences
p = Significance of | | | | | |
23.03 27.04 01.06 06.07 10.08 14.09
difference to t0

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J. Koch, R. Plattfaut and I. Kregel International Journal of Information Management Data Insights 1 (2021) 100014

H4: New positions explicitly due to pandemic Figure 7. Analysis of hypothesis H4: New positions explic-
itly due to pandemic

Abs. Rel. p

t0 0 0% n/a

t1 6 0.02% 0.00

t2 71 2.06% 0.00

t3 69 1.59% 0.00

Abs. = Absolute number

of occurrences
Rel. = Relative
proportion of
occurrences
p = Significance of
| | | | | |
difference to t0 23.03 27.04 01.06 06.07 10.08 14.09

H5: Additional Healthcare Positions Figure 8. Analysis of hypothesis H5: Additional health-
care positions

Abs. Rel. p

t0 540 8.10% n/a

t1 1211 22.92% 0.00

t2 626 10.28% 0.00

t3 781 9.74% 0.00

Abs. = Absolute number

of occurrences
Rel. = Relative
proportion of occurrences
p = Significance of
difference to t0 | | | | | |
23.03 27.04 01.06 06.07 10.08 14.09

year period, the number of IT operations-based job vacancies increased With regards to our first hypothesis, we do not observe a clear reduc-
by more than 25% on average. However, over the course of the pan- tion of job openings over the course of the pandemic. As such, H1 needs
demic, including the last calendar week 38 we looked at, there were to be rejected. A potential reason can be found in the stimulus packages
no major movements in job requirements. From calendar week 38 on- the German federal government has issued [Jennen, 2021]. Moreover,
wards, the number of IT operations-based jobs on offer visibly declined issues of seasonality might exist which cannot fully be analysed with the
(see Figure 10). data set at hand.
However, our analysis shows with regard to H8: Although the gen- In contrast to this, our data supports the second hypothesis. We ob-
eral share of job advertisements with designated WFH opportunities serve a consequent increase of the number of job advertisements men-
increased comparatively strongly during the observation period (H3), tioning longer processing time and, at the same time, a significant de-
the share of job advertisements with designated WFH technology fo- crease of the application deadlines mentioned. As such, we can argue
cuses within the group of IT jobs decreased from 7.41% to 4.46% (see that public organisations try to accommodate for internal process inef-
Figure 11). ficiencies through more pressure on future applicants.
Thirdly, we can indeed see that during the pandemic significantly
5. Discussion more job openings allow for WFH than before the pandemic. As such,
we believe that the trend to work from home that was observed in the
5.1. Theoretical Contribution private sector also holds true for the public sector.
Our data also supports the fourth hypothesis. There are some new
Our results have several contributions to theory. Next to the descrip- positions that are specifically opened to counter the effects of the pan-
tion of the what (see section 4) we can reflect on our hypotheses (section demic. However, this number is on a low level with about 70 open job
2) and, thus, give insights into the why [Kar and Dwivedi, 2020]. postings per week.

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J. Koch, R. Plattfaut and I. Kregel International Journal of Information Management Data Insights 1 (2021) 100014

Figure 9. Analysis of hypothesis H6: Additional IT posi-

H6: Additional IT positions
tions

Abs. Rel. p

t0 2390 36.00% n/a

t1 3036 57.46% 0.00

t2 3445 56.57% 0.00

t3 4334 54.05% 0.00

Abs. = Absolute number

of occurrences
Rel. = Relative
proportion of
occurrences
p = Significance of | | | | | |
difference to t0 23.03 27.04 01.06 06.07 10.08 14.09

H7: Higher share of IT operations positions Figure 10. Analysis of hypothesis H7: Higher share of IT
operations positions

Abs. Rel. p

t0 1180 58.67% n/a

t1 2265 74.61% 0.00

t2 2778 80.64% 0.00

t3 3278 75.63% 0.00

Abs. = Absolute number

of occurrences
Rel. = Relative
proportion of
occurrences
p = Significance of | | | | | |
difference to t0 23.03 27.04 01.06 06.07 10.08 14.09

H8: Higher share of IT positions with WFH-technology focus Figure 11. Analysis of hypothesis H8: Higher share of IT
positions with WFH-technology focus

Abs. Rel. p

t0 126 6.27% n/a

t1 129 4.24% 0.00

t2 168 4.87% 0.01

t3 152 3.50% 0.00

Abs. = Absolute number

of occurrences
Rel. = Relative
proportion of
occurrences
p = Significance of | | | | | |
difference to t0 23.03 27.04 01.06 06.07 10.08 14.09

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J. Koch, R. Plattfaut and I. Kregel International Journal of Information Management Data Insights 1 (2021) 100014

Table 2
Overview of hypothesis and verification/falsification

# Hypotheses Results

H1 The total number of job openings will be reduced over the course of the pandemic Rejected

H2 The pandemic is explicitly mentioned to account for longer processing times during the crisis Not rejected

H3 During the pandemic, positions allowing for home office and/or mention working-from-home (WFH) Not rejected
technology will increase

H4 New positions to specifically react on the pandemic will be created during the pandemic Not rejected

H5 Especially at the start of the pandemic, recruitment for healthcare professionals will increase Not rejected

H6 The share of new IT/digitalisation positions among all positions will rise during the pandemic Not rejected

H7 Especially at the beginning of the pandemic, public organisations will focus their IT professionals recruiting Not rejected
on support and maintenance of IT

H8 Considering H3, the positions that allow home office and/or mention working-from-home (WFH) Rejected
technology will increase particularly strongly within the group of IT jobs

Fifthly, our data indicates a significant increase of healthcare pro- month/week, it could nevertheless be influenced by such environmen-
fessionals needed by the public sector. Apparently, to battle the health tal factors. Due to the shortness of the time series used, we cannot com-
effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, German public administrations hire pletely exclude the possibility that we contain, at least in part, seasonal
significantly more healthcare professionals than before the pandemic. components. Accordingly, we must assume the risk that there is, in part,
With regards to our sixth hypotheses, the data indicates support, a structure in the time series that repeats itself seasonally. Specifically,
too. The share of IT professionals among all positions rose significantly. for the case of labour markets, we know that there is often an annual
The digitalisation trend that could be observed in the private sector pattern in the frequency distribution of the data, such as the decrease
[Waizenegger et al., 2020] also holds true for the public sector. and increase in the unemployment rate between summer and winter
Moreover, our data also supports H7. Public organisations hire sig- months [Policy Department for Economic 2020, 81]. We therefore can-
nificantly more IT support and maintenance professionals than before not yet completely exclude such seasonal effects from our analyses.
the pandemic. Apparently, while digitalisation was fuelled due to the It would be useful to continue the study presented here over the
Covid-19 pandemic, this includes the increasing use of existing solution course of the pandemic to obtain a more reliable picture of the postu-
even more. lated needs of the public sector and to track their evolution over time.
Lastly, our eight hypothesis needs to be rejected. Although we could In our data analysis, job advertisements were used to identify needs,
show that more positions now allow WFH, corresponding IT jobs are not skills and competencies sought, and frameworks offered. We hypothe-
in higher demand than before the crisis. sise that job advertisements from the domain-exclusive database pre-
A tabular overview of a verification and falsification of our hypothe- sented here will act as a reliable source of human capital needs in the
ses can be found in Table 2. public sector and provide us with insights into the existing labour market
Prior research has indicated that organisational routines need to situation and the skill requirements needed. The limitation, however, is
change due to the Covid-19 pandemic [Borghoff and Plattfaut, 2021]. that examining job advertisements in general may not always reflect the
Our results support this notion and indicate that, on the one hand, or- true requirements of an employer. Employers may require more skills
ganisations now change their hiring strategies and, on the other hand, than can reasonably be expected of a candidate or use additional non-
the corresponding hiring processes take longer than before. As such, we specialised vocabulary to phrase job advertisements in a way that is
contribute a better theoretical understanding of the impact of the pan- attractive to the broadest possible group of candidates [Gardiner et al.,
demic on public sector organisations. Whether this impact also holds for 2018]. Such biases are present in our data, but we believe that the num-
other types of exogenous shocks is up to future research (see also section ber of job ads we examined should be sufficient to minimise the bias’s
5.4). effect [de Mauro et al., 2018]. Processing such a broad, quantifiable data
source as used in this study gives our chosen approach an advantage over
other research methods, such as interviews, because it reduces the risk
5.2. Practical Implications
of bias from specific contextual backgrounds [Chintalapudi et al., 2021,
Batra et al., 2021, Debortoli et al., 2014]. Our results are further limited
The results of this study also have implications for practitioners. With
to the German public sector labour market, as we cannot properly map
regards to applicants, our results indicate that especially healthcare and
multilingual sources with the chosen methods of analysis. Our study is
IT professionals can make use of an increasing demand and, as such,
inductive and exploratory; future confirmatory research (e.g., surveys)
rising market values. Moreover, applicants can also more likely demand
is therefore necessary to test and refine our findings [Chintalapudi et al.,
to have options to work from home. With regards to public sector de-
2021, Kobayashi et al., 2018].
cision makers, our results indicate that the competition for qualified IT
professionals is higher than before. As our literature review showed,
5.4. Future Research
private sector organisations increasingly invest into digitalisation dur-
ing the Covid-19 pandemic. Our results support the same picture for
Future research could focus on similar data from other countries,
the public sector. As such, public sector decision makers should find the
e.g., India, the U.S., and Australia using similar public sector job plat-
right value for their current and future IT professionals.
forms. Moreover, future research could also try to assess the effect of
the described developments on public sector performance. We are so
5.3. Limitations far only able to report on open positions and their properties. It would
be interesting to see in how far IT recruiting strategies influence service
Our findings are limited to the German public sector job market and provision and satisfaction during the pandemic. Furthermore, when we
its accessible data. For comparison we rely on a snapshot from August submitted this article, the pandemic unfortunately was not over. There-
2019. While we are unaware of any special developments in this specific fore, further effects could be observed and the effects of the pandemic

10
J. Koch, R. Plattfaut and I. Kregel International Journal of Information Management Data Insights 1 (2021) 100014

could include several phases. Another field of interest could be the long- V. Borghoff, R. Plattfaut, BPM Capability Configuration in Times of Crises: How to Adapt
term effects even years after the pandemic. Lastly, future research could Processes when the Virus strikes?, in: F. Ahlemann, R. Schütte, S. Stieglitz (Eds.),
Wirtschaftsinformatik 2021 Proceedings, 2021.
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ORCIDs de Mauro, A., Greco, M., Grimaldi, M., & Ritala, P. (2018). Human resources for Big Data
professions: A systematic classification of job roles and required skill sets. Information
• Julian Koch: 0000-0003-0159-5571 Processing & Management, 54, 807–817. 10.1016/j.ipm.2017.05.004.
Debortoli, S., Müller, O., & vom Brocke, J. (2014). Comparing Business Intelligence and
• Ralf Plattfaut: 0000-0002-1442-4758 Big Data Skills. Bus Inf Syst Eng, 6, 289–300. 10.1007/s12599-014-0344-2.
• Ingo Kregel: 0000-0001-5981-8702 Desson, Z., Lambertz, L., Peters, J. W., Falkenbach, M., & Kauer, L. (2020). Eu-
rope’s Covid-19 outliers: German, Austrian and Swiss policy responses during the
early stages of the 2020 pandemic. Health policy and technology, 9, 405–418.
Declaration of Competing Interest 10.1016/j.hlpt.2020.09.003.
Dwivedi, Y. K., Hughes, D. L., Coombs, C., Constantiou, I., Duan, Y., Edwards, J. S.,
Gupta, B., Lal, B., Misra, S., Prashant, P., Raman, R., Rana, N. P., Sharma, S. K., &
None.
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