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Only around 7% of employers use inclusive wording in their job ads. The gap is particularly wide in the private sector.
While many employers lament the lack of applications from people with severe disabilities, actively reaching out to them in recruitment remains the exception.
Although employers with 20 or more employees are subject to a statutory employment quota of 5%, only 39.4% of employers met this requirement in full in 2024. As an analysis by the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) based on 7.4 million job ads from 142,500 employers subject to the quota now shows, only around 7% use inclusive wording in their listings on the Federal Employment Agency’s job search portal. This includes explicit statements welcoming applications, references to preferential consideration or commitments to equal treatment.
There are clear differences by ownership type and company size: Almost half of public-sector employers (46%) include such a statement in their ads, while private-sector employers lag far behind at 3.7%. Within the private sector, energy and water supply (11.5%) and education (10.8%) stand out positively. The proportion also rises steadily with company size. Large organizations with 250 or more employees use inclusive wording far more often (37.6% in the public sector and 5.2% in the private sector) than small employers with 20 to 39 employees, where the figures are just 25.7% (public) and 1.0% (private). While the Federal Employment Agency’s job search portal is only one channel, and employers also use commercial platforms or specialized job boards, the findings nevertheless reveal a structural gap.
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This article first appeared as an editorial in the weekly politjobs newsletter. If you would like to receive this newsletter with the latest jobs in politics by email every Wednesday, you can subscribe here .