Key findings of the August 2025 Transition Barometer:
78 per cent of young people at Transition Point I start their dream training programme. Companies are able to fill 87 per cent of advertised apprenticeship positions.
The Transition Barometer examines young people’s educational decisions on the one hand and the situation on the apprenticeship market on the other. A thematic spotlight on the application process rounds off the 2025 study.
Application process
Key findings of the Transition Barometer August 2025:
Of the 93,026 young people who completed their compulsory schooling in the summer of 2025, 50 per cent entered basic vocational training and 34 per cent chose the general education route. 16 per cent opted for an interim solution for various reasons: 11 per cent entered a bridge programme and 5 per cent are taking a gap year.
By August 2025, 87 per cent or 75,839 of the apprenticeships on offer had been filled. This figure is close to the figures from previous years and indicates that the allocation of apprenticeships in summer 2025 was generally normal. According to the companies, the most common reason for unfilled apprenticeships was that they had received insufficient applications. This is closely followed by the reason that no applications were received at all. Supply is therefore greater than demand.
Young people find the application process to be largely positive. The main difficulties lie in practical hurdles such as writing documents, searching for jobs and dealing with rejections. Companies, on the other hand, are more critical in their assessment of the quality of applications and complain about poor academic performance, language deficits and unclear motivation. There is hardly any sign of a general weakness in demand. The responses from companies and young people show that there is a gap between companies’ expectations, young people’s skills and their perception of their own performance. It is therefore crucial to specifically improve the interface between requirements and skills.
The trilingual cockpit (DE, FR, IT) for the second wave in 2025 provides an overview of the current situation at transition point I. The bilingual in-depth report (DE, FR) discusses the results in detail. There is also a chapter on the focus topic for 2025, ‘The application process’.
