While local authorities report a deficit of 24.8 billion euros, another problem remains unsolved. According to the dbb Monitor 2025, the public service is currently short of around 570,000 staff – some 20,000 more than a year earlier. The finding is unambiguous: this has long ceased to be only about new posts. It is about which tasks the state can still perform reliably at all.
The staffing crisis in the public service is not a new phenomenon, but it grows more acute year by year. Ulrich Silberbach, federal chairman of the dbb, put it squarely when the monitor was presented in January 2025: the state is finding no adequate answers to the skills shortage, to demographic change and to the bureaucratic thicket that citizens encounter every day. In many offices and institutions the shortage has long been palpable. Waiting times lengthen, procedures stall, staff come under pressure.
The obvious answer, to advertise still more posts, falls short. Advertised vacancies frequently remain unfilled. The shortage points to a structural problem. An administration that keeps extending its range of tasks without asking itself honestly what it is able to deliver will remain overstretched even with more staff. What is lacking is not only people, but prioritisation.
There is also the fact that the expectations of younger generations and the reality inside public authorities frequently diverge. People entering the public service today look for purpose, development opportunities and flexibility. What prevails instead is rigid hierarchies, tight rulebooks and little room to shape things. There are first moves towards more modern models, from more flexible working hours through to talent programmes, but they are still the exception rather than the rule.
In this way the skills shortage becomes a twofold risk. On the one hand the state loses its ability to function when key posts stay vacant. On the other it loses its appeal when culture and structures do not move. The real challenge is therefore to develop the public service in such a way that, with fewer people, it does not merely survive but becomes more productive.
The staffing deficit is thus to be understood much like the budget deficit: it forces limits to be recognised, expectations to be reviewed and the essentials to be placed at the centre. More posts alone will not resolve the crisis as long as structures and tasks remain unchanged. What is needed is a state with the courage to deal honestly with what it can do – and to turn its attention to what really counts.
Further reading
dbb Beamtenbund: „dbb Monitor öffentlicher Dienst 2025 erschienen – Der Personalmangel wächst“