The new coalition government in Germany intends to bring in 400,000 competent foreign workers per year to address a demographic imbalance as well as labor shortages in key industries that might jeopardize the country’s recovery from the coronavirus outbreak.

“The shortage of skilled workers has become so serious by now that it is dramatically slowing down our economy,” Christian Duerr, parliamentary leader of the co-governing Free Democrats (FDP), told business magazine WirtschaftsWoche.

“We can only get the problem of an aging workforce under control with a modern immigration policy… We have to reach the mark of 400,000 skilled workers from abroad as quickly as possible,” Duerr added.

In order to make working in Germany more appealing, Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats, Duerr’s libertarian FDP, and the environmentalist Greens agreed in their coalition deal on measures such as a points system for specialists from outside the European Union and raising the national minimum wage to 12 euros ($13.60) per hour.

According to the employer-friendly German Economic Institute, the labor force will fall by over 300,000 people this year as more older workers retire than younger workers enter the workforce.

This gap is predicted to expand to more than 650,000 persons by 2029, resulting in a 5-million-strong workforce deficit by 2030. Despite the economic downturn, the number of employed Germans increased to about 45 million last year.

Following decades of low birth rates and uneven migration, Germany’s public pension system faces a demographic time bomb, with fewer employees burdened with the duty of supporting the pensions of a growing population of pensioners who are living longer lives.

(Adapted from USNews.com)

Categories: Economy & Finance, Entrepreneurship, Geopolitics, Regulations & Legal, Strategy, Sustainability