Labour shortage: Germany to Admit 400,000 Skilled Immigrants Annually

Per Second NewsJanuary 28, 20221 Mins read1.1k

Germany is facing significant labor shortages in 2022, as the European giants grapple with changing demographics and the retirement of an older generation of workers.

Persecondnews.com gathered that the Covid-19 pandemic is not only having a seismic impact on global public health but also causing chaos for the economy, with supply chain disruptions and labor shortages a big problem for businesses around the world.

“The shortage of skilled workers is now so serious that it is dramatically slowing down our economy,” Christian Duerr, leader of Germany’s Free Democratic Party said in an interview with WirtschaftsWoche.

The German Economic Institute estimates that without significant interventions, the labor force in Europe’s biggest economy will shrink by more than 300,000 people this year, as older workers are retiring at a faster rate than younger ones are entering the labor market.

“We have 300,000 job openings today, and expect that to climb to a million and more,” Robert Habeck, a leader of the Greens party, told a news conference. “If we don’t close that gap, we will have real productivity problems.”

Germany has sought to address this shortage by inviting skilled workers and lowering the barriers to legal immigration.

“We can only get the aging labor market under control with a modern immigration policy,” Duerr added.

Recently, the German legislature has pushed to again expand the size and scope of their immigration system. It passed the Skilled Immigration Act in 2020 to expand the number of opportunities for qualified professionals and make it easier for skilled workers from non-EU countries to migrate to Germany for work.