Driver shortage in transport services by the numbers: what official German data shows and what helps

Once a year the Federal Employment Agency assesses in which occupations skilled workers are scarce. For 2025 it identified 157 shortage occupations, down from 163 the year before. The assessment rests on six indicators, among them the vacancy time, the number of jobseekers per registered vacancy and the occupation-specific unemployment rate. Each indicator scores zero to three points; an average of 2.0 or more makes an occupation a shortage occupation, between 1.5 and 2.0 it is under observation.

For driving occupations at skilled worker level, the data annex to the 2025 shortage analysis shows the following picture:

The gap between bus and car is striking. For bus drivers there are three jobseekers per registered vacancy and the occupation-specific unemployment rate is 3.5 percent. In car-based passenger transport there are 22.7 jobseekers per vacancy and an unemployment rate of 9.3 percent. Even so, a vacancy there stays open for a median of 77 days. The statistics do not say why. A mismatch between applicants and jobs, on working hours, licence or passenger transport permit, is a plausible reading. This data does not prove it.

The age structure is harder than the vacancy times. The employment statistics by occupation for 31 December 2025 show a share of older workers in driving occupations far above the average across all occupations.

The picture is even clearer for minijobs, the German marginal employment scheme. Of the 32,466 marginally employed workers in the bus and tram driver group, 15,868 were at least 65 at the end of 2025, almost half. In car-based passenger transport it was 26,193 out of 84,085. In many regions school transport already runs to a large extent on pensioners. That is a strength while they keep driving, and a risk, because this group will shrink on its own over the coming years.

For your own staff planning this means: look at the birth years of your drivers. If you will lose a third of them to retirement within five years, you need to recruit now, not then.

The Federal Employment Agency publishes shortage scores per federal state, but only for whole occupation groups. By its own account, case numbers for individual subgroups such as bus drivers are often too small at state level; the vacancy time, for example, is only reported once at least 60 vacancies were closed in a year. The state results for 2025 therefore only cover group 521, road vehicle drivers, which lumps together truck, bus, taxi and other drivers.

• Nationwide, group 521 scores 1.5, which means under observation.
• Schleswig-Holstein with Hamburg, Lower Saxony with Bremen, Hesse, Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, Brandenburg with Berlin and Saxony-Anhalt also score 1.5.
• North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate with Saarland and Saxony score 1.3, Thuringia 1.2, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania 1.0.

No state reaches shortage status at group level, although bus and truck drivers individually do nationwide. Above all, this shows how much aggregation dilutes the signal. A reliable statement on which district makes it especially hard for transport services to find staff cannot be derived from this data. Feedback from the local employment agency or your own number of applicants per job ad says more.

The choice of vehicle also determines how large the pool of applicants is. Under section 6 of the German Driving Licence Regulation (FeV), class B covers motor vehicles up to 3,500 kg designed for no more than eight persons besides the driver. For up to 16 passenger seats and a length of at most 8 m, the driver needs class D1, which under section 10 FeV is generally available from age 21.

The professional driver qualification, the German implementation of the EU Driver CPC, depends on this too. Section 1 of the Professional Drivers Qualification Act (BKrFQG) covers drivers carrying goods or passengers in vehicles that require a licence of class C1, C1E, C, CE, D1, D1E, D or DE. Class B is not on that list. Periodic training follows a five-year cycle under section 5 BKrFQG.

On the passenger transport permit: under section 48 FeV, an additional licence for passenger transport is needed by anyone who drives an ambulance for payment or on a business basis, or who carries passengers on a trip that requires a licence under the Passenger Transport Act, for example in private hire. The minimum age is 21, or 19 if restricted to ambulances. School trips that are exempt from licensing under the German exemption regulation do not fall under the second alternative; the article on exempted school transport explains where the line runs.

For recruitment this leads to a sober trade-off. Two nine-seaters with class B drivers may be easier to staff than one minibus with 16 seats, even if the larger bus is cheaper per passenger. Which option pays off only shows in a calculation with real staff and vehicle costs, as broken down in the article on cost per kilometre in minibus transport services.

School transport has a working time profile that hardly fits a full-time job: two hours in the morning, two to three hours at midday, a gap in between. The statistics reflect this. At the end of 2025, 50.6 percent of employees subject to social insurance in car-based passenger transport worked part-time, and 18.3 percent of bus and tram drivers. Across all occupations the figure is 31.3 percent.

Planning split shifts properly

A split shift with an early and a midday run is permitted, but the gap in between is not a rest period. Under section 5 of the German Working Time Act (ArbZG), a driver needs at least eleven hours of uninterrupted rest after the end of the daily working time; transport undertakings may shorten this by one hour if it is compensated. Adding an evening dialysis return trip therefore pushes back the earliest start the next morning. Whether your vehicle falls under the Working Time Act or the EU driving time rules is covered in the article on driving and rest times in minibus transport services.

Minijob: 603 euros in 2026

The minijob earnings ceiling is tied to the minimum wage. Under section 8(1a) of Social Code Book IV, it equals the monthly pay for ten hours a week at the minimum wage. With a minimum wage of 13.90 euros per hour, the minijob guidelines of the German social insurance bodies put it at 603 euros since 1 January 2026, rising to 633 euros on 1 January 2027. Paying minijobbers the minimum wage gives just over 43 hours a month. That covers one school run on every school day, but rarely the early and midday runs together.

Pensioners as drivers

Since 1 January 2023 there have been no additional earnings limits for old-age pensions, as the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs explains in its pension glossary. An old-age pensioner can therefore drive beyond minijob level without the pension being reduced. This does not apply to reduced earning capacity pensions; there it is worth checking with the pension insurance before signing a contract.

• Cut runs to fit applicants’ circumstances: early run only, midday run only, or both as a split shift.
• Do not plan minijob runs above 603 euros; fluctuating extra trips early in the month count too.
• For pensioners, keep an eye on fitness and licence deadlines; under section 48(5) FeV the passenger transport permit must be renewed at least every five years with proof of fitness.
• Offer fixed runs with regular passengers; especially in transport for people with disabilities, the bond with passengers is a reason for many drivers to stay.
• Name substitutes in advance so that a driver falling ill does not land on the dispatcher’s desk at 6 a.m.

The lever least discussed in the driver shortage debate lies in your own dispatching. Every hour a driver spends driving empty or waiting for a connection is an hour you have to staff without carrying a passenger. If you reduce the number of driver hours needed, you need fewer people for the same volume of work.

1. 1Measure empty kilometres and idle timeRecord separately for each run how many kilometres and minutes are driven with and without passengers. Without that figure every optimisation remains a hunch.
2. 2Combine tripsPut passengers with similar destinations and time windows into one run, for example several children for the same special needs school or several patients for the same dialysis centre.
3. 3Plan rotations instead of single runsSchedule the end of the early run so that the vehicle goes straight into the next trip instead of returning empty to the depot.
4. 4Agree time windows with the clientJust ten minutes of extra leeway at the start of school or an appointment can make an additional run, and with it an additional driver, unnecessary.
5. 5Plan changes immediatelyFeed cancellations, sickness and extra trips into the running plan on the same day instead of keeping a reserve run on standby.

A documented example from school transport shows what this can achieve. The town of Olfen switched to a demand-based school bus system in 2013 and, according to Mobilikon of the Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development, cut school bus mileage by around 40 percent and saved one vehicle. This does not transfer one to one, but it shows the order of magnitude hidden in planning. How school transport software combines runs and makes empty kilometres visible can be tested on your own data.