The rate of full equivalencies varies depending on the profession. For the regulated professions, the rate of positive recognition ranges between 35 and 70 percent, except for the profession of health care and pediatric nurse, which has a low success rate of 24 percent. In under 60 percent of applicants who aim to work as general care and pediatric nurse, midwife/obstetric nurse, medical-technical radiology assistant, medical-technical laboratory assistant and pharmaceutical-technical assistant, a compensatory measure was imposed which had not yet been completed by the end of the reporting year 2021. When considering the evaluations, it should be noted that a larger number of applications for certain professions may be allocated to individual countries, which can significantly influence the results of full equivalence.
As shown in the chart, the highest rate of decisions of full equivalence for the non-regulated professions was issued for cook, at 86 percent. This is immediately followed by the professions of electrician, industrial electrician, and specialist for metal technology with over 70 percent, which roughly corresponds to the values from the previous year. On the other hand, the rates of full equivalence are strikingly low for the professions of construction draftsman and mechanic for sanitary, heating and air-conditioning technology. Nevertheless, 77 and 78 percent respectively are certified as partially equivalent. Furthermore, the rate of all non-regulated professions for which partial equivalence is certified ranges from nearly 30 to 80 percent. The professions of geriatric nurse (38 percent) and hairdresser (17 percent) recorded the most negative decisions.
For the exact number of recognition decisions, see the figure below.
In 2021, as in previous years, the medical regulated professions will predominate in the recognition procedures for foreign professional qualifications in Germany. In terms of the number of recognition decisions, the majority of processed applications concerned the general care nurses and nursing professional with a number of applications of 17,124. An increase in the number of applications has also been recorded for the profession of doctor, so that this is the next largest group with a number of applications of 8,298 (2020: 7,665). Compared to the previous year, the number of applications for the non-regulated profession of electronics technician has increased (from 597 in 2020 to 825 in 2021), meaning that this is one of the five professions with the highest number of applications. In addition, the non-regulated professions of office clerk, electrical systems technician and cook (here the number of applications from the previous year almost doubled) are also among the 10 professions with the highest number of applications in 2021. However, with fewer than 1,000 applications, they are all significantly behind the two medical professions mentioned above.
