Is B1 German Really Enough? The Numbers Tell a Different Story

For many people moving to Germany, B1 becomes the big goal.

Finish the Integration Course. Pass the Deutsch-Test für Zuwanderer. Get the certificate.

B1 can feel like the finish line.

But recent German research raises an important question:

What if B1 isn't actually the finish line?

The numbers suggest that reaching B1 may solve one problem while leaving another one waiting immediately afterward.

Germany Teaches Toward B1. Employers Often Ask for B2.

This is perhaps the most striking number.

In 2026, researchers Sekou Keita and Alexander Kubis from Germany's Institute for Employment Research (IAB) examined German employers' language requirements.

Their report has a remarkable title:

“Half of all establishments require at least a B2 language level for hiring.”

That's approximately:

50%.

Think about what this means for a German learner.

You can spend hundreds of hours learning German.

You can reach B1.

You can achieve one of the central language milestones of Germany's integration system.

And then you start looking for work—only to discover that a significant part of the labour market expects you to go one level further.

Of course, requirements vary enormously between occupations and employers. Keita and Kubis also found that some employers are willing to consider applicants with lower German proficiency, particularly under certain conditions.

But the broader mismatch is difficult to ignore:

B1 is an important integration milestone.

B2 is already expected by around half of establishments when hiring.

So perhaps the question shouldn't simply be:

“Did you reach B1?”

It should also be:

“What happens after B1?”

Learning German Already Requires Hundreds of Hours

The size of that question becomes clearer when we consider how much work reaching B1 already requires.

Germany's standard Integration Course provides 600 teaching units of language instruction.

At 45 minutes per unit, that's around:

450 actual hours in the classroom.

Imagine doing something for 450 hours.

At 15 hours per week, that's 30 weeks.

And those are only the scheduled teaching hours.

They don't include every hour spent doing homework, memorising vocabulary, watching German videos, reading, practising pronunciation, speaking with other people or trying to understand letters from German authorities.

After all of that, B1 can still be only an intermediate milestone.

More Lessons Don't Automatically Solve the Problem

A fascinating 2025 study by Moritz Marbach, Ehsan Vallizadeh, Niklas Harder, Dominik Hangartner and Jens Hainmueller demonstrates why counting classroom hours alone can be misleading.

The researchers examined a large German language programme introduced in response to the arrival of refugees in 2015 and 2016.

More than:

230,000 refugees

participated.

The programme provided up to:

320 hours of German instruction.

It cost approximately:

€400 million.

That is an enormous language-learning intervention.

So what happened to employment?

The researchers found:

“no discernible effect on refugee employment over the subsequent 2 years.”

That's important.

It doesn't mean German lessons don't work.

Quite the opposite—the second part of the study makes the story much more interesting.

A More Comprehensive Programme Produced a Different Result

The researchers also examined Germany's more comprehensive existing Integration Course.

That programme offered up to 600 hours of language instruction, together with a standardized curriculum and a more extensive learning structure.

The results were substantially different.

Approximately 12 months after enrolment, participation was associated with an increase in employment of around:

4–5 percentage points.

The authors write that the programme:

“increased refugee employment by about between 4 and 5 percentage points 12 months after enrolment.”

We need to be careful with this comparison.

It doesn't prove that 600 hours are better than 320 simply because 600 is a bigger number. The programmes differed in their structure, curriculum and other characteristics.

But it demonstrates something much more useful:

Not every hour of language instruction produces the same outcome.

So perhaps we are measuring the wrong thing when we ask:

“How many hours of German did you study?”

A better question might be:

“What were you actually able to do with those hours?”

German Learning Doesn't End With a Certificate

Recent BAMF research gives us another perspective.

In 2025, researcher Jan Eckhard examined the long-term language development of refugees who arrived in Germany in 2015 and 2016.

By 2023, more than:

90%

reported at least intermediate German proficiency.

The majority reported good or very good German.

Among members of this cohort who participated in language-support programmes, around:

86%

had attended an Integration Course.

Those numbers are encouraging.

But look at the timeline.

They arrived in 2015 and 2016.

Researchers were still observing their language development in 2023.

That's roughly seven or eight years.

German wasn't something everybody simply “completed” after one course.

For many adults, language acquisition is a process that continues for years.

And That Changes How We Think About B1

We often imagine language learning as a staircase:

A1 → A2 → B1 → done.

But real life increasingly looks more like:

A1 → A2 → B1 → work → more German → B2 → professional vocabulary → more practice → more German.

And this is where the numbers start connecting.

Germany's standard Integration Course already represents roughly 450 classroom hours of language instruction.

Research shows that the design and comprehensiveness of language programmes can matter for employment outcomes.

Long-term BAMF research shows German proficiency continuing to develop over many years.

And the latest IAB research tells us that approximately half of German establishments require at least B2 when hiring.

So reaching B1 can be a major achievement without necessarily removing the language barrier.

Maybe We're Asking the Wrong Question Again

When somebody spends hundreds of hours learning German and finally reaches B1, we tend to ask:

“Did you pass?”

Maybe that's not enough.

We should also ask:

Can you use German confidently at work?

Can you understand your colleagues when they speak naturally?

Can you explain a complicated problem?

Can you write a professional email without translating every sentence?

Can you participate in a meeting?

Can you apply for the jobs you're actually qualified to do?

And if the answer is still no, perhaps B1 wasn't the end of the problem.

It was simply one milestone inside a much longer journey.

Because the real goal isn't to collect a B1 certificate.

The real goal is to make German usable.

And that leads to an even bigger question:

If Germany helps learners reach B1, while around half of establishments expect at least B2 when hiring, who helps learners cross the distance between the two?

That may be the real bottleneck.

Research

Keita, Sekou & Kubis, Alexander (2026). Deutschkenntnisse und Arbeitsmarktintegration: Die Hälfte der Betriebe fordert bei Einstellungen mindestens ein B2-Sprachniveau. IAB-Kurzbericht 07/2026.

Marbach, Moritz; Vallizadeh, Ehsan; Harder, Niklas; Hangartner, Dominik & Hainmueller, Jens (2025). Does ad hoc language training improve the economic integration of refugees? Evidence from Germany's response to the Syrian refugee crisis. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, 188(4), 1168–1183.

Eckhard, Jan (2025). Ten Years in Germany: Language Acquisition and Language Support of Refugees from 2015 and 2016. BAMF Brief Analysis 06|2025.