For the third consecutive year, Germany has retained its position as the 10th-best country for non-native English proficiency in Education First’s annual ranking. Taking a closer look, where in Germany do people have the best English language skills?

North Rhine-Westphalia speaks the best English

According to the 2024 English Proficiency Index by Education First (EF), an international education company, North Rhine-Westphalia is currently the German federal state where locals speak the best English.

Germany’s most populous state was awarded 598 points in the ranking, significantly over the 477 global average. Rhineland-Palatinate and Bremen rounded out the top three states for non-native English skills.

English proficiency is higher in western states

EF’s assessment, which uses standardised English test results of 2,1 million adults across 116 countries and regions, revealed that Germany’s persistent East-West divide is also reflected in English skills today.

Besides Berlin, Hesse, Lower Saxony and Saxony as the outliers, English proficiency essentially divided Germany’s 16 federal states along East-West lines, with states of the former West performing better. The divide was also reflected among the best-performing cities for English proficiency, with Karlsruhe, Cologne, Bonn, Stuttgart and Düsseldorf taking the top five spots.

Several factors are likely at play. Alongside the former West Germany being larger, the western states are still home to the country’s largest business centres, such as Bonn, Cologne, Hamburg, Munich and Stuttgart. EF found that internationally, better English is spoken in the private sector than in the public sector, due to the nature of the work at an international versus local level.

English proficiency also sees generational discrepancies. Since the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, people have flocked from the former East to the western states, with a significant youth migration wave hitting in the early 2000s. The Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) calculates the average age in the former East to be 47,2 years compared to 44,2 years in western states.

With fewer young people staying in the former East and EF’s data showing English proficiency among 18-40-year-olds to be significantly better than among those over 41, this provides another possible explanation for the persistent East-West divide.

But among every age group in Germany, including 18-20-year-olds, English skills are on the decline. The trend is reflected internationally, with worldwide levels of English proficiency declining for the fourth consecutive year.

Do you need to speak German to get a job in Germany?

With Germany maintaining its spot in 10th place, the bigger picture remains that by international comparison, Germany has a high level of English proficiency. 

In combination with a record-high worker shortage and newly implemented policies to encourage third-country skilled workers to come to Germany, many may wonder how good their German must be to find work in the federal republic, or if you can get by on English alone.

Of course, this depends on where in Germany you want to live and in what sector you want to work, but the overall answer remains no, German is a requirement for finding stable and well-paid work in Germany. 

A recent report by the online job board Indeed revealed that of the millions of Germany-based job listings posted between September 2023 and August 2024, just 2,7 percent of advertisements said that German language qualifications were not required for the job.

By comparison, in the Netherlands - which took the top spot in EF’s 2024 English Proficiency ranking -  7,8 percent of listed jobs said Dutch was not required for a successful application. The local language was not required for just 5,8 percent of jobs listed in Spain, 4,1 percent in France and 3,9 percent in Italy. 

Migrants who come to Germany to work and learn the language, earn more. A 2019 study by the Institute for Economic Research (IW) in Cologne found that the better their German skills, the more migrant workers in Germany are paid. “Language acquisition is the key to successful integration into the German workplace,” IW report author Wido Geis-Thöne explained.

German federal states where English is spoken best

Overall, these are the German federal states where English is best spoken, and the points each state was awarded by EF:

1. North Rhine-Westphalia (619)
2. Rhineland-Palatinate (617)
3. Bremen (616)
4. Berlin (615)
5. Bavaria (613)
6. Baden-Württemberg (612)
7. Hamburg (610)
8. Saxony (606)
9. Saarland (606)
10. Lower Saxony (599)
11. Hesse (597)
12. Saxony-Anhalt (596)
13. Brandenburg (594)
14. Thuringia (592)
15. Schleswig-Holstein (592)
16. Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (571)

According to EF, these are in the countries in which non-native speakers speak the best English

1. The Netherlands (636)
2. Norway (610)
3. Singapore (609)
4. Sweden (608)
5. Croatia (607)
6. Portugal (605)
7. Denmark (603)
8. Greece (602)
9. Austria (600)
10. Germany (598)

For more information about the study, check out the EF website.

Thumb image credit: Eddie Jordan Photos / Shutterstock.com