Skills shortage
Foreigners fill the gap of the baby boomers in the labor market
The generation of baby boomers retires – the gap in the labor market cannot stuff German workers in numbers. Help comes from abroad.
Foreign employees are becoming increasingly important when filling the baby boomer gap on the German labor market. In the years 2015 to 2024, employment at the level of specialists in Germany increased by 600,000 – while the number of German employees declined.
Even with the helper activities – i.e. jobs that do not need formal vocational training – the plus of a good one million workers is almost exclusively due to foreign employees. This was found in researchers from the Institute for Labor Market and Vocational Research in a study published in Nuremberg.
In 2024, 95 younger people (between 28 and 32 years) came to 100 older employees (between 58 and 62 years). Only 68 younger people followed in the new federal states. “In western Germany, the relation of younger employees is cheaper, but there will not be everywhere to compensate for the age-related departures completely through younger people,” said IAB researcher Holger Seibert.
“So far, immigration for employment purposes has been too low to be able to close the personnel slopes in the long term,” said IAB researcher Sarah Kuhn. “However, the compensatory power of foreign employees in East German regions outside the major cities would be required to cushion the future shortage of workers.”
dpa
Source: Stern
