Overview

• In a new Bertelsmann-Stiftung analysis of roughly eight million 2024 postings, just 16.4% explicitly advertised family-friendly measures.
• Only 12% of ads made a clear commitment to work–life compatibility and 2.7% mentioned childcare support, based on a dataset totaling ten million postings since 2018.
• Flexible working-time options were seldom specified, with 14% allowing employees to choose their working hours’ extent and 25% offering flexible weekly distribution.
• Family-friendliness and flexibility appeared far more often in higher-qualified roles (21.4% and 33%) than in helper-level jobs (11.2% and 14%), which experts say disadvantages lower-qualified workers and reinforces care burdens.
• Bertelsmann’s Eric Thode warns firms risk losing talent if they fail to signal concrete practices, while career advisers urge applicants to look for specific terms like “Teilzeit ab 20h” or “mobiles Arbeiten bis zu 3 Tage/Woche” and to verify policies in interviews.