BERLIN, Feb. 19 (Xinhua) -- With around 1.46 million job vacancies on the German labor market in the fourth quarter of 2018, there have never been so many unfilled jobs in Germany, the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) announced Tuesday.

"We see a clear increase in the number of job vacancies in all economic sectors. This applies both to the previous quarter and to the same quarter of the previous year," IAB labor market expert Alexander Kubis said.

Compared to the third quarter of 2018, the number of vacant jobs in Germany increased by 221,000.

The shortage of workers is more pronounced in western Germany. According to IAB, the job vacancies in the fourth quarter of 2018 were divided into about 1,134,000 in western Germany and about 325,000 in eastern Germany.

IAB surveys the entire job market of Germany four times per year. The review also includes jobs that are not registered at Germany's federal employment agencies and evaluates the responses from around 14,500 employers from all sectors of the German economy.

The job vacancy rate in Germany, which indicates the ratio between positions to be filled immediately and ongoing employments subject to social insurance, averages 3.5 percent in Germany. According to IAB, this ratio had been 2.9 percent a year earlier. "Demand for personnel has thus risen significantly," Kubis said.

Ulf Rinne, senior research associate at the IZA Institute of Labor Economics in Bonn, told Xinhua that "the growing labor shortages in various sectors of the economy underscore that Germany needs a comprehensive strategy to attract skilled workers."