The number of day care workers has increased over the past year.
On March 1, 2021, 751,159 people were working in this area, as the Federal Statistical Office announced on Thursday in Wiesbaden.
This corresponds to an increase of 23,435 people (3.2 percent).
Of these, 708,136 people were employed as educational, managerial and administrative staff in day-care centers and 43,023 as day carers in publicly funded child day care.
In addition, 110,165 people were employed in the domestic and technical areas of day-care centers.
In contrast, the number of children under three years of age in care fell for the first time since the start of the time series in 2006: On March 1, 2021, 2.3 percent fewer children were cared for in day-care centers or by child minders than a year earlier.
In addition to the population development, the statistical office attributes this to the fact that, due to the corona pandemic, new care contracts were probably not concluded in some cases because, for example, it was only possible to get used to day care centers to a limited extent.
In contrast, no decline was observed in the three to under six age group.
The number of children cared for here rose by 1.1 percent year-on-year to 2.2 million.
The east-west divide remains
Nationwide, as of March 1, a total of around 3.9 million children under the age of 14 were cared for in daycare centers or day care. There is still an east-west divide. While in eastern Germany with 52.3 percent on average more than half of all children under three years of age are in day care, in the west it is only just under a third with 30.6 percent. This difference is smaller among the three to under six year olds - in the east it is 94 percent, in the west 91.4 percent.
As before, the proportion of men who work in day care is relatively low. On March 1, 2021, 55,455 men were employed in the educational, management and administrative areas of a day care facility or were active as day care fathers. The proportion of men - based on all people working in these areas - was 7.4 percent. In a country comparison, the proportion of male employees was highest in Berlin and Hamburg (12.5 percent each).
In the past ten years, more and more men decided to work in day care, as it was said: The number of male employees has more than tripled since 2011 (2011: 18,433), the proportion of men almost doubled (2011: 3, 8 percent).
Saxony-Anhalt recorded the highest increase.
Here the number of male employees has almost quintupled (from 298 to 1,373).
Meanwhile, the number of day-care centers has also increased. Nationwide there were 58,500 day-care centers on March 1 of the current year - 900 more than at the same time last year (plus 1.6 percent).