Deutsche Bahn, Germany’s national railway operator, counted 25,000 more new hires than in 2020, even when fewer people were taking the train due to the Coronavirus pandemic, management announced on Thursday.
German Transport Minister, Andreas Scheuer praised the state-owned company as a job machine.
In 2019, Deutsche Bahn hired 24,000 new people.
The operator has ambitious plans to further grow its network in Germany, although a significant proportion of its 215,000 employees are set to go into retirement in the coming years.
In the next two years, Deutsche Bahn intends to hire 18,000 new people.
Taking into account employees set to leave the company, the workforce is set to grow by around 5,000 in 2020, and by around 2,000 annually in the two years after that.
This year, many of the new hires were in the areas of maintenance, as well as train drivers or train attendants, said Martin Seiler, Deutsche Bahn’s chief human resources officer.
Engineers and IT experts were also hired in larger numbers. –dpa
