In the German labor market, foreigners coming to work in Germany from countries outside the European Union are playing an increasingly important role. In the last ten years, their number has more than tripled. There are relatively few Russians among them. However, the main influx of foreign workforce, also growing rapidly, comes from EU member states. This is evidenced by the most recent data on labor migration, published on 22 July by the German Federal Statistical Office (Destatis).

Germany is actively issuing temporary residence permits

At the end of 2021, more than 295,000 foreign nationals from countries outside the EU were registered in Germany who had received a temporary residence permit (permit) for employment. In 2011, there were 90,500 of them. Thus, in the last ten years, the number of these migrant workers has more than tripled, highlights Destatis.

Approximately a quarter (24%) of workers with a temporary residence permit were holders of the “blue card” (EU Blue Card). This special type of EU residence and work permit has been issued since 2012 to foreign specialists with higher education if they have received an invitation to a specific and well-paid job: the annual salary must be at least 56,400 euros gross (before tax) .

But the minimum level can be even lower – 43,992 euros, if we are talking about scarce professions, which in Germany include, for example, doctors and IT specialists. Almost half of Blue Card holders in Germany (48%) had a specialty missing at the end of last year.

How many workers in Germany with Russian passport?

The total number of Russians who purposely came to Germany to work and received a temporary residence permit reached 9,400 people by the end of 2021, according to Destatis. Thus, after Turkey, Russia ranked last among the top ten countries outside the EU that provide the largest influx of personnel to the German labor market.

And the undisputed leader with 11% share is India, where 33,900 workers came from. The top five also include Bosnia and Herzegovina (26,300), Kosovo (19,600), Serbia (17,400) and China (16,700).

Experts from India can be found in a number of German high-tech companies

Thus, Germany receives the largest number of workers from the two most populous states on the planet with a highly developed higher education system – India and China, or from the Balkan countries – Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Serbia. Albania and North Macedonia are also to be added to them, ranking 7th and 8th on the Destatis list. It is worth noting that, according to this statistic, 75% more workers came from the United States of America (6th place) to work in Germany (16,500) than in Russia.

Here, however, it should be borne in mind that in reality there are many more holders of Russian and, by the way, Turkish passports on the German labor market. After all, Destatis in this case includes in its statistics only workers who have arrived with a temporary residence permit and does not take into account all those who live and work in Germany on a permanent basis, for example after marriage to German citizens, not to mention holders of dual citizenship.

IT specialists from Russia and Belarus are in high demand in Germany

At the same time, these statistics very clearly reflect the real flows of labor migration and the importance that some countries have for the replacement of the German labor market.

German IT companies are very interested in Russian and Belarusian IT experts

However, this year the relatively modest role of Russians in Destatis’ statistics could grow significantly. Due to large-scale Russian aggression against Ukraine and the withdrawal of numerous Western companies from the Russian market, a large number of highly qualified personnel left Russia, and some of them went specifically to Germany.

So Deutsche Bank alone has brought hundreds of IT specialists to Germany from its computer centers in Moscow and St. Petersburg, offering them jobs at the bank’s new technology center opened in early June in Berlin. And at the beginning of July, the influential German digital industry association Bitkom presented a specific program to maximize the acceleration and simplification of the issuance of visas and residence permits for IT specialists from Russia (and Belarus).

Labor migration in Germany: EU countries play a key role

However, the main role in satisfying the shortage of personnel in the German economy is still played by residents of EU countries, who in Germany do not need a residence permit or a work permit. According to Destatis, the total number of EU citizens who came to Germany to work was 1,650,000 in 2021. This is almost six times the number of migrant workers from the rest of the world, including China and India.

People from eastern and southeastern Europe often work in Germany on construction sites

Furthermore, almost a quarter (23%) EU citizens who moved to work in Germany were from Poland (380,000). Then come Romania (271,000), Italy (208,000), Croatia (131,000) and Bulgaria (109,000), in addition to Greece (108,000). Thus, the first six are again dominated by countries wholly or partially located in the Balkan Peninsula. The top ten also include Hungary, Austria, Spain and France.

Thus, the German labor market and, consequently, the collectives of German companies are becoming more and more multinational. This process began in the 1950s and 1960s, when the rapidly developing West German economy required large numbers of workers and the RFA began purposefully importing guest workers from Italy, Portugal, Turkey and the former Yugoslavia.

In today’s united Germany, the active involvement of foreign, mostly skilled labor began in 2008 and increased dramatically after 2014, notes Destatis. This is due both to the steady growth of the German economy, the largest in Europe, and to the deteriorating demographic situation – the aging of German society, when the number of retirees grows and, at the same time, fewer young Germans enter working life.