Running out of workers: Germany ‘needs 400,000 immigrants a year’

Desperate for more workers, Germany will need to allow significantly more immigrants with sought-after skills into the country, the head of the country’s jobs agency said Tuesday, reports Daily Sabah.

Issuing an urgent appeal to the government, Detlef Scheele, head of the Federal Employment Agency (BA), said Germany needs some 400,000 skilled immigrants per year to make up for labor shortages.

“Germany is running out of skilled workers,” Scheele told the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung in an interview.

“For me this is not about asylum, but about targeted immigration for the gaps in the labor market,” he noted.

“We need 400,000 immigrants a year. In other words, significantly more than in previous years,” said Scheele. “From care and air conditioning to logisticians and academics – there will be a shortage of skilled workers everywhere.”

He was dismissive of possible resistance to migration as a solution to labor issues.

“You can stand up and say: ‘We don’t want foreigners.’ But that doesn’t work,” Scheele noted. “The fact is Germany is running out of workers.”

Due to demographic developments, the number of potential workers of typical professional age will decrease by almost 150,000 this year, Scheele stated.

“It will be much more dramatic in the next few years.”

“Germany can only solve the problem by qualifying unskilled workers and people whose jobs have been lost due to technical change, letting female involuntary part-time workers work longer – and above all by bringing immigrants into the country,” Scheele said.

Involuntary part-time workers are those who say they would prefer to work full time but can’t find full-time jobs.