There is a shortage of skilled workers in many sectors of the German economy. According to BA boss Nahles, this would be even more serious if so many people without a German passport weren’t working here.
According to the head of the Federal Employment Agency (BA), Andrea Nahles, the German labor market is urgently dependent on foreign workers. “We now have 5.3 million people who work in Germany without a German passport and we couldn’t do without them,” she said Interview of the week SWR. The German labor market cannot afford a policy that relies on so-called remigration. Right-wing extremists use the term “remigration” to trivialize expulsions and forced departures.
Nahles cited care in nursing homes as an example of the need for foreign workers. Without people with foreign roots there would be “massive bottlenecks,” warned the CEO of the Nuremberg Federal Employment Agency.
Majority from non-EU countries
According to BA information, in 2023 people from outside the European Union were the largest group of those who took a job in Germany. Nevertheless, almost 700,000 positions are still unfilled. From June 2022 to June 2023, a total of 53,000 people from Ukraine alone took up employment subject to social security contributions in Germany. There were 24,000 from India in the same period.
In recent weeks there have been demonstrations against right-wing extremism and the AfD in numerous German cities. The trigger was a report by the research network “Correctiv” about a meeting between AfD representatives with neo-Nazis and entrepreneurs at the end of November. According to research published in January, the meeting discussed the mass expulsion of people with a migration background.