As of: January 31, 2024, 2:38 p.m
By: Lisa Mayerhofer
Comments
Press
Split
Immigrants contribute to the increase in employment in Germany - and are urgently needed due to the shortage of skilled workers.
But many immigrants leave quite quickly.
Nuremberg - Many industries in Germany have been complaining about a shortage of skilled workers for a long time and are calling for more immigration of skilled workers from abroad - even though the economic engine is currently sputtering.
In fact, according to the Federal Employment Agency (BA), only foreigners are now contributing to the increase in employment on the German labor market.
Nahles: “Never before have so many people been employed in Germany as they are currently”
“Never before have so many people been employed in Germany as they are currently,” said BA boss Andrea Nahles on Wednesday (January 31) in Nuremberg.
The increase in employment in 2023 is due exclusively to people without a German passport.
The majority of these concern people from third countries outside the European Union (EU).
“That’s new too,” said Nahles.
“This also applies if we exclude the refugee countries Ukraine, Syria or Afghanistan.
This trend is likely to continue.”
According to the BA figures, the number of Germans employed fell by 77,000 last year.
This last happened in the Corona year 2020.
For many years, German nationals contributed a large part to the increase in employment, as did immigration from EU countries on the basis of freedom of movement for workers.
Germany is urgently dependent on the immigration of skilled workers.
(Symbolic image) © Rupert Oberhäuser/Imago
The German labor market needs immigration from third countries
“The German labor market needs skilled workers and workers from third countries for demographic reasons alone,” said Nahles.
“This is all the more true since internal migration from the EU is falling.” In the meantime, Eastern European countries have caught up enormously economically and are themselves partly struggling with demographic problems.
Therefore, fewer and fewer people are coming from these countries, while migration from third countries is becoming more important: “Even if we do not take the refugee states and the Western Balkans into account, the increase in employment in third countries exceeds the increase from the European Union and the Germans.”
According to Nahles, the numbers underline “how important foreign workers are for the German labor market, and according to our forecast, this will continue to increase in the future.”
The IAB research institute assumes that there would be seven million fewer workers available to the labor market by 2035 if immigration were stopped.
According to the BA figures, the largest contribution from third countries to the increase in employment came from Ukrainian citizens, of whom 53,000 more had jobs subject to social security contributions in June 2023 compared to the previous year.
Mini-jobs are not counted.
This was followed by people from India with an increase of 24,000 and from Syria with 15,000 more.
The BA put the increase in employment from third countries at a total of 257,000.
In total, the BA recorded 34.7 million employees subject to social security contributions in June 2023.
Nahles: “Society has to help ensure that people enjoy coming”
Nahles appealed to the population in Germany to support foreign employees.
“Society has to help ensure that people like to come and feel comfortable here and also want to stay,” said Nahles.
“Integration doesn’t just mean doing work, but also being integrated into society and being welcome here.”
The foreign skilled workers should then stay in Germany for as long as possible and not emigrate again.
Because not only immigration - emigration is also high, reports the
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,
citing the migration report.
Germans form a minority among emigrants; instead, almost half of a total of almost 700,000 emigrants who were in Germany for more than three months leave the country again.
What's particularly bitter is that many of them are currently in their prime working age and are qualified specialists, the newspaper reports.
Emigration instead of immigration: Why are migrants leaving Germany again?
But why do so many immigrants leave Germany again?
The Institute for Applied Economic Research in Tübingen investigated this question in a study.
The result according to
the FAZ
: “Most interviewees said that they regretted leaving Germany and attributed the departure to external reasons.”
However, a fifth of the migrants surveyed by the institute in the study also cited integration problems as a reason, according to the newspaper: "He or she did not feel comfortable in Germany, was discriminated against or did not find a connection." Eight percent of those surveyed did not like the working conditions appropriate.
Language barriers and better earning opportunities are also a factor.
Improvements could be made here in Germany – for example by reducing bureaucracy.
But not all problems can be solved: “It’s always dark, always gray” in Germany, said one migrant.
“You can’t see the sun for weeks.”
With material from Reuters