Fewer Germans are starting apprenticeships, but foreign nationals are stepping in to fill the gap. New figures from the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) show Germany's dual vocational training system shrank again in 2025, even as enrolment among non-German apprentices surged by 18 percent, deepening a shift that has been building for years.
A total of 461,900 people began a dual vocational training programme in Germany during 2025, marking a drop of 2.8 percent, or 13,100 individuals, compared with the previous year. This follows a similar dip in 2024, when new training contracts fell by 1.0 percent, breaking a run of earlier annual increases. By the end of December 2025, 1,211,800 people were enrolled in dual vocational training nationwide, a decrease of 6,100, or 0.5 percent, from the year before.
The overall drop conceals a sharp divide along nationality lines. The number of German apprentices fell by 6 percent, equivalent to 25,600 fewer people, whereas the number of apprentices without German citizenship climbed by 18 percent, or 12,400 people. Destatis noted that this growth among foreign trainees builds on a decade-long trend: new contracts signed by non-German nationals have more than doubled over ten years, rising from roughly 38,800 in 2015 to 82,400 in 2025.
Within this group, the sharpest gains came from apprentices holding Ukrainian citizenship, up 64 percent to 9,500, and Vietnamese citizenship, up 36 percent to 9,600. Turkish and Afghan nationals also saw notable increases, of 48 percent and 47 percent respectively.
Among male apprentices, training as an automotive mechatronics technician remained the most common choice, accounting for 8 percent of new contracts, or 22,300 people. It was followed by training as a plumbing, heating and air-conditioning systems mechanic and by electronics training. Notably, IT specialist training slipped to fourth place among men in 2025 after ranking second the previous year, a change that helped push the heating and sanitation trade up to second place.
Women most often chose to train as medical assistants, representing 10 percent, or 16,100, of female apprentices, followed by office management roles at 9 percent and dental assistant training at 8 percent. This ranking order among women's top three professions stayed the same as in 2024. Strikingly, medical assistant training, the leading occupation for women, did not appear among the fifty most common apprenticeships chosen by men.
Destatis further highlighted that occupational preferences differ somewhat between apprentices with and without German citizenship. While automotive mechatronics training ranked first for men in both groups, women without German citizenship overwhelmingly favoured medical occupations, with dental assistant training accounting for 23 percent and medical assistant training for 11 percent. Office management training, which topped the list for German women, ranked only third among non-German women, at 6 percent.
By the end of 2025, most apprentices were training within industry and commerce, accounting for 56 percent of the total, followed by the skilled crafts sector at 29 percent. The remaining trainees were distributed across the liberal professions, the public sector, agriculture and domestic services, in descending order of share.
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