The employment rate of immigrants in Germany reached a new high in 2022. This emerges from the current OECD migration report. However, the rate is significantly lower for women.
Immigrants who are allowed to work in Germany are increasingly better integrated into the labor market. This emerges from the current migration report from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
The rate rose by 1.5 percentage points to 69.8 percent at the end of 2022. According to study co-author Thomas Liebig, this is the highest value since records began in the early 2000s. According to the OECD, this rate is 78.9 percent for native-born people.
The OECD has not only observed this trend in Germany: with the exception of Poland, the employment rate of immigrants increased in all 38 member states.
Higher Labor shortage
The organization sees the reason for the better integration primarily in the tense labor market situation in many member countries. Due to a high labor and skilled labor shortage, many countries tried to promote labor migration. In Germany, however, labor migration is still of secondary importance: only 14 percent of people immigrated to work in Germany.
There is a backlog of immigrant women
However, the experts still see a lot of catching up to do when it comes to the labor market integration of immigrant women, especially those with children. The employment rate of immigrant mothers in Germany is 42 percent, which is 31 percentage points lower than that of native-born mothers. One reason for this, according to the study, is that migrant women often give birth earlier, which makes it more difficult for them to access the labor market in their countries.
Co-author Liebig sees “significant potential” for the labor market here. If this “gender gap” could be reduced, half a million more people would be employed in this country. Migration and especially integration must therefore be “viewed more from a family perspective,” said Liebig.
Half of permanent immigrants are EU citizens
With more than six million permanent immigrants to the OECD countries, the influx in 2022 will have reached an unprecedented level, according to the authors. In addition, there is a significant refugee movement from Ukraine, which was estimated at 4.7 million refugees by mid-2023.
The OECD assumes there will be 641,100 immigrants in Germany in 2022. This does not take into account the war refugees from Ukraine, of whom Germany has taken in more than a million since 2021.
Most permanent immigrants came to Germany in 2021 from the EU countries Romania, Poland and Bulgaria, followed by Syria, Turkey and Afghanistan. In 2022, migration as part of the EU’s freedom of movement also accounted for half of permanent immigration, according to the OECD.
According to the OECD, the second largest group was humanitarian migration at 21 percent. These are, for example, people who are fleeing war.