Shortly before the general election, the Indeed job exchange analyzes the professions and status of the 6,211 candidates.
You can find out more about the results here.
The fact that academics such as lawyers or economists are overrepresented in the German Bundestag is an open secret and has been criticized frequently in recent years.
The job site Indeed has recently analyzed whether this could change in the future Bundestag.
To do
this, the company evaluated the current professions and educational qualifications as well as the
status
(such as students or retirees) of
all 6,211 election applicants
on the website of the Federal
Returning Officer
.
Lawyers at the top for men, female nurses at the top ten for women
As the analysis shows, lawyers will probably also be represented in large numbers in the future Bundestag, especially among the male MPs: A total of 128 candidates currently practice this profession - the highest value in this comparison. In second place are 118 politicians who are employed. Third place is occupied by entrepreneurs (74), closely followed by managing directors (72). In addition to other expected professions such as
teacher or businessman, software developers
with 46 candidates (seventh place) are surprisingly represented among the ten most common professions among male candidates.
Among the candidates, employees lead the top ten in the professional comparison with 54 representatives, followed by teachers (50) and lawyers (49).
In fourth place there are also 30 nurses available for election, whose poor working conditions were repeatedly discussed, especially in the wake of the pandemic.
A somewhat astonishing and outdated classification can also be found for 17 women politicians who are housewives as a profession or position in the Federal Returning Officer.
With a view to the ten most common occupations, there are more female candidates working in the household than, for example, civil servants (15th, tenth place).
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Students are most likely to run for elections, but so are many retirees
In addition to the various professionally active candidates, the 6,211 people also include many with details such as student. In a nationwide comparison, with a total of 386 representatives, this group is by far the most frequently represented among the candidates and thus makes up over six percent of all candidacies in Germany. Most of the students set up the GREEN and THE PARTY with 55 people each. This is followed by Volt (47), DIE LINKE (36) and the FDP (26). Both CDU and SPD occupy ninth place with 14 people.
In addition to the many students
, a total of 153 retirees are running for election
, who make up around 2.5 percent of all candidacies.
When comparing the parties, most of the pensioners are in the communist parties of the DKP (26) and MLPD (18).
At the NPD, twelve people are the third most retirees who run for election.
Systemically relevant professions are represented more frequently
In the course of the Corona crisis, the lack of expertise in so-called system-relevant professions was clearly criticized in the Bundestag.
As the analysis shows, voters in the Bundestag election have the opportunity to change this.
Among the candidatures there are a number of people with these professional qualifications on the state lists and constituencies.
So there are
teachers (50) and teachers (51), doctors (41) and doctors (21) and nurses (28) and teachers (25)
in the top ten of the most common occupations in the male and female candidates.
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The oldest candidacies
In addition to the professional backgrounds, the Federal Returning Officer also shows the years of birth of all 6,211 candidates.
According to Indeed's calculations, the
average age of all eligible people is around 43 years
.
According to their high number of pensioners, the MLPD and the DKP send the oldest politicians into the race with an average age of 61 and 60 respectively.
The youngest applicants, on the other hand, are driven by Volt with an average age of 33 years.
With an average age of 42 years, the GRÜNE represents the youngest of the parties for government candidates.
At the SPD the average is 44 years, at the CDU 46.
That is the distribution of the candidacies for election
A total of 6,211 candidates, including 2,024 women, will run for the federal election on September 26, 2021. Of these, 1,284 people only apply in one constituency and 2,851 candidates only on a state list. 2,076 people are running for election in a constituency as well as on a state list. “The multi-layered professional expertise among the candidates for the Bundestag election is extremely gratifying. It can only be an advantage if empirical values from the most varied of professions are gathered in the new Bundestag ”, says
Frank Hensgens, Managing Director Indeed Germany
.
“I am curious whether the voters will incorporate this consideration into their voting decisions.
In terms of diversity in terms of gender and origin, however, there is still a lot of catching up to do.
As in business, in politics it is obviously mainly men with a comparatively homogeneous background who apply for top positions,
”continues Hensgens and adds:“ A much greater variety would be desirable.
Because in politics too, diversity ensures better results, more creativity and innovation!
And we urgently need all of this in view of the upcoming challenges in the next legislative period. "
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About the investigation
For the investigation, Indeed analyzed the 6,211 profiles of all candidacies for the federal election in 2021 on the website of the Federal Returning Officer, an offer from the Federal Statistical Office.
The persons were classified according to occupation or status as well as party and year of birth.
The respective information on the page was not edited afterwards.
Individual designations such as “student of law”, which were given to four female candidates, are therefore not included in the total number of female students.
