One week, one job board, 401 companies.

Between 10 and 16 July 2026 we queried the open API of Germany's Federal Employment Agency job board for eight back-office roles: invoicing, accounts payable, payroll, billing, order processing, dispatch, accounting clerks and process management. After removing staffing agencies, large corporates and duplicates, 475 open positions from 401 distinct companies remained, in a single week, on a single job board.

The state itself calls these roles automatable.

Two federal sources, opened and quoted verbatim on the survey date:

01

Accountant: 100% automatable, median 4,259 € per month

The IAB Job-Futuromat (the research institute of the Federal Employment Agency) rates all seven core tasks of the accountant role as automatable, today. The agency's own pay atlas puts the median full-time gross salary at 4,259 euros per month.

IAB / Entgeltatlas
02

Payroll clerk: 100% automatable, median 4,259 € per month

All four core tasks rated automatable. Same pay bracket as accounting.

IAB / Entgeltatlas
03

Freight dispatcher: 100% automatable, median 3,971 € per month

All six core tasks rated automatable by the IAB.

IAB / Entgeltatlas
04

Office clerk: 83% automatable, median 3,820 € per month

Five of six core tasks rated automatable.

IAB / Entgeltatlas

Over 21 million euros of yearly salary, advertised in one week.

We deliberately calculate low: 475 filtered positions times the lowest of the four medians (3,820 euros) times twelve months is 21.8 million euros in gross yearly salary, excluding employer contributions. That is what German mid-sized companies advertised in a single July week, on one job board, for work whose core the IAB rates 77 to 100 percent automatable. The total stock across our eight search terms was around 8,100 open positions.

Automatable does not mean redundant.

Every one of these roles contains judgement: exceptions, supplier calls, month-end decisions. The honest reading is different: companies are hiring people to carry recurring, rule-based routes because the route was never built. Build the route, and the same person handles exceptions and judgement instead of keying data, which is also the part of the job people actually stay for.