Germany's greying workforce makes its labour shortage a problem for the ages
and migration, and you probably think refugees. But German employers desperate for workers have their eye on a different sort of immigrant. After a decade of economic growth, unemployment is at its lowest and job vacancies their highest since reunification in 1990. Almost two-thirds of firms complain about a lack of skilled labour . So Germany is starting to look outward.
The law is a hard-fought compromise between Germany’s “grand coalition” of centre-right and centre-left. Hubertus Heil, the labour minister, calls it a “milestone” in German history. Yet as written, it will do little to alleviate employers’ woes. It is extremely hard for foreigners to prove they have picked up skills equivalent to those taught in Germany.
Filiz Polat, of the opposition Greens, detects a whiff of hostility to foreigners in the resistance to establishing a more generous regime. Some in the ruling Christian Democratic Union indeed cling to the old canard that Germany is not a “migration country”, even though one-quarter of the population has a migrant background and over 100,000 people are naturalised each year.
The law has also been caught up in the political slipstream of 2015-16, when over a million asylum-seekers entered Germany. Between 10,000 and 15,000 still arrive every month, and few of those ordered to leave do so. The compromise hashed out by the coalition partners rules out migrants “changing lanes” from asylum to work—although some who have found jobs or training will be able to stay—and the skilled-worker law is accompanied by a controversial bill to toughen deportation rules.
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