In the last three years, German has become the most sought after foreign language by employers in the United Kingdom, according to the job website, Indeed. The organization, a global reference in recruitment, has seen a 10% surge in the number of jobs advertised on their website requiring German language skills. While French had long been the most-sought after language skills, jobs advertised requiring French have only increased by 1% in three years.
What is causing a surge in requirement for German speakers on the British job market? Difficult to say. However, the analysis of millions of job advertisements has revealed that there was a surge of 3% in the requirement of German language skills right before the Brexit referendum in 2016. “Many U.K employers who require multilingual staff are becoming increasingly unsettled as a perfect storm brews- fewer and fewer linguists are emerging from our education system just as Brexit uncertainty looks to be deterring workers relocating here from the EU”, explains Bill Richards,managing director of the British branch of Indeed, in a press release.
Last February, a BBC analysis demonstrated that the study of foreign languages at GCSE has never been so low. Indeed, a drop of up to 50% in the number of students opting for languages at GCSE level has been registered in several areas in the UK. The fall has been especially obvious in German and French. As a result, employers in the UK could be turning to immigration to cater for the need for linguists on the job market.
Chinese language skills are also becoming more and more attractive on the British job market. Indeed, since 2016, there has been a 35.39% surge in the number of jobs requiring Chinese as a language skills. Spanish which is the fourth most sought-after language by British employers has seen a 9.5% drop in attractiveness. Next is Italian, Dutch, Polish, Japanese, Russian and Arabic which are all becoming less and less sought-after on the job market.
