Working in Bochum

Overview

Bochum is Germany's #16 city by population: 358,676 residents (Eurostat Urban Audit, 1 Jan 2025), -1.7% since 2016. It lies in North Rhine-Westphalia, which has an unemployment rate of 4.2% and GDP per head of €48,600. Today 1,267 job ads published in the last 28 days are live in the city itself (4 per 1,000 residents).

See all jobs in Bochum →North Rhine-Westphalia state guideAll 50 cities

Jobs

LIVE · CITY (Bochum) Live feed Source: Bundesagentur Jobsuche · Data: ads published in the last 28 days · counted 07/11/2026

1,267 live ads. The tables below count ads by field, occupation, employer and place.

Top fields (Berufsfelder)

Top occupations

Employers with the most ads

Staffing agencies (Zeitarbeit) are included; see each employer page for the flag.

Places with the most ads

Places are as the Bundesagentur names them; ads within the radius the agency assigns to the place name.

What the ads say (indicators)

Indicators come from structured fields in the ads; many ads leave them blank. They describe current offers, not the whole labour market.

Population

CITY (Bochum) Official statistics Source: Eurostat urb_cpop1 · Data: population on 1 January

Pay & cost

See the tax and contribution tables. The calculator below applies them.

NATIONAL (all Germany) Official statistics Source: Eurostat earn_ses22_28 · Data: reference year 2022 (latest Structure of Earnings Survey)

Mean annual gross earnings of employees in enterprises with 10 or more employees were €48,655 in 2022 (about €4,055 a month): men €54,375, women €42,325. The table splits them by broad occupation group (ISCO-08 major groups).

Gap = (men − women) ÷ men, unadjusted for hours, age, occupation within group or industry. Figures are 2022 and do not include enterprises with fewer than 10 employees; wages have risen since. Groups are broad: a nurse and a doctor are not in the same group, but a baker and an electrician are.

NATIONAL Law Source: Statutory minimum wage (MiLoG) + Eurostat earn_mw_cur · Data: from 1 January 2026

The statutory minimum wage is €13.90 per hour from 1 January 2026 (Eurostat shows a full-time monthly equivalent of €2,343 for 2026, €2,161 for 2025). A further step to €14.60 on 1 January 2027 was set by the Minimum Wage Commission and the Federal Government: confirm on the official site. Mini-job earnings limit 2026: €603 a month (€7,236 a year).

Foreigners

NATIONAL (all Germany) Official guidance Source: Make it in Germany, Federal Foreign Office, BAMF · Data: checked 07/11/2026

• EU/EEA and Swiss citizens may live and work in Germany without a work permit; register your address with the local registration office within 2 weeks of moving in (Bundesmeldegesetz).
• Skilled workers from other countries normally need a visa/residence permit. The main routes are the permit for qualified professionals (recognised vocational or university qualification and a job offer), the EU Blue Card for university graduates, and the Opportunity Card (Chancenkarte) for job seekers using a points system. See Make it in Germany and the Federal Foreign Office.
• EU Blue Card salary minimums 2026: €50,700 gross a year in general and €45,934.20 for shortage occupations and some newcomers, according to the Federal Ministry of the Interior notice published in the Bundesanzeiger (18.12.2025); confirm the current figures on the official sites before applying.
• Recognition of qualifications: regulated professions (doctors, nurses, teachers, lawyers, engineers in some states) need recognition before you can practise; use the Recognition in Germany portal to find the competent body. Unregulated jobs can start without formal recognition, but a recognised qualification helps for the visa.
• Language: many ads ask for German (often B1–B2 level); IT, research and some international companies work in English. The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) runs integration and language courses.

Rules change often; this is a starting map, not legal advice.

Nearby cities

CITY → nearest of the 50 largest Modelled + official + live Source: GeoNames coordinates (straight-line distance), Eurostat, Bundesagentur feed · Data: 2025

Compare

Momentum

LIVE (Bundesagentur feed, daily snapshot kept by AtiveSite) Own time series Source: AtiveSite daily counts of Bundesagentur ads · Data: tracking since 07/11/2026

Every day we store how many ads are live for Bochum. The Bundesagentur publishes no history, so this series becomes unique data. The trend line appears from the second day of tracking; today: 1,267 live ads.

FAQ

Sources

• Live jobs: Bundesagentur für Arbeit – Jobsuche (public job-search interface of the Federal Employment Agency; ads published in the last 28 days; counts by facet)
• Population by state: Eurostat demo_r_pjangrp3 · employment: lfst_r_lfe2emp · unemployment: lfst_r_lfu3rt · GDP: nama_10r_2gdp · area: reg_area3
• City population: Eurostat Urban Audit urb_cpop1 · coordinates: GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) · state borders: deutschlandGeoJSON
• Earnings: Eurostat earn_ses22_28 (Structure of Earnings Survey 2022) · minimum wage: Eurostat earn_mw_cur and MiLoG
• Tax and contributions: § 32a EStG, SGB V, SGB VI, SGB XI, SGB III; average health top-up 2.9%: BMG notice (Bundesanzeiger 10.11.2025)
• Law: ArbZG, BUrlG, EFZG, BGB §622, KSchG, MuSchG, BEEG, BetrVG
• Immigration and recognition: Make it in Germany, Recognition in Germany, Federal Foreign Office – visa, BAMF

Data gaps we know about (not guessed)

• Wages by single occupation, city and state (the official source we use covers 9 broad occupation groups, 2022). The Federal Employment Agency's pay atlas has no public data interface that we could use.
• Rents and living costs by city; kindergarten fees (they differ by state and municipality).
• Employee headcount by company for all employers: there is no free national register; we show live hiring and, where Wikidata has a dated figure, a reported group-wide headcount.
• Union membership numbers and sector-by-sector collective-agreement pay tables.