There is a shortage of skilled workers, baby boomers are retiring, and fewer and fewer young people are coming along. Without people with a migration background, the gap would be even larger. But discrimination and hurdles in accessing the labor market mean that many of them work in precarious jobs.

The German Economic Institute (IW) says there could be a shortage of 723,000 skilled workers by 2029. That is 47 percent more than in 2024. In addition, more and more “baby boomers” will be retiring, which is why the gap in skilled workers is likely to continue to grow.

A similar picture is drawn byBottleneck analysisthe Federal Employment Agency (BA), which shows in which “bottleneck occupations” there is a shortage of skilled workers or there is a threat. To do this, the BA evaluates every year how scarce skilled workers are in a profession using six indicators, such as vacancy times, unemployment rates and wage trends. Care and health professions as well as jobs in construction and crafts continue to be particularly hard hit. A total of 157 professions are considered bottleneck occupations, six fewer than in the previous year.

Migrants play a central role in dealing with this shortage. Because workers with a migrant background are predominantly well represented in jobs that tend to be paid less and are often physically demanding. These are precisely the professions in which there is a known severe shortage of skilled workers. The situation in the sectors is often precarious and working conditions are particularly poor.

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Migrants often work in “shortage occupations”.

In the German economy as a whole, 27 percent of employees have an immigration background. The Federal Statistical Office includes all people who, or whose both parents, have immigrated to Germany since 1950. Otherwise, people with a migrant background include everyone where the person or at least one parent was not born with German citizenship.

The highest proportion of employees with an immigration history in “bottleneck occupations” in 2025 is in the professional field of cooks at 56 percent. This is followed by food production with 55 percent, floor laying with 54 percent and scaffolding with 51 percent. The proportion is also above average among bus drivers and truck drivers as well as in meat processing, hotel service and metal construction. In nursing professions, a third of employees are people with an immigrant background.

In 2024, the welding and joining technology professional group was still at the top with 60 percent and above the professional groups mentioned. However, the industry no longer appears as an independent group in the 2025 figures.

In contrast, people with a history of immigration are greatly underrepresented in government professions such as the police service (8 percent), judicial administration (9 percent) and as teachers (9 percent in vocational subjects, 10 percent in primary school).

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Unequal conditions on the labor market

Like thatFederal Statistical Officeshows that integration into the labor market occurs at different speeds depending on the country of origin and length of stay. Immigrants from EU countries benefit from the so-called “free movement of workers”, i.e. the right to work in other EU countries without a work permit, and usually from faster recognition of their professional qualifications.

They are employed at a correspondingly early age: 89 percent of men and 73 percent of women aged 25 to 59 who immigrated from the EU and who lived in Germany for less than five years were employed in 2025.

The journey often takes longer for people from non-EU countries. For men from Africa in the same age group and with the same length of stay, the employment rate was 79 percent, while for women it was only 47 percent. The rates increase with the length of stay: after 20 to 25 years in Germany, it was 82 percent for men from Africa and 68 percent for women.

The difference between men and women also has to do with care work. Women move to Germany more often than family members and are not available to the labor market for longer due to family obligations. In addition, there is reproductive work, which is not counted as work in the traditional sense: women spend inGermanyOn average, they spend twice as much time as men on care work, i.e. cooking, childcare or caring for relatives in need of care.

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Refugees and other migrants are disadvantaged

There are also institutional hurdles for people from non-EU countries.Analyzesfrom the Institute for Labor Market and Occupational Research (IAB) show that employment bans and residency requirements inhibit the integration of refugees into the labor market, especially during ongoing asylum procedures.

Since the CEAS Adaptation Act of February 2026, asylum seekers have generally been allowed to work after just three months, even if they live in a reception facility. Previously, there was actually a six-month work ban there. At the same time, the CEAS reform has led to greater sealing of the EU's external borders and a de facto abolition of the right to asylum.

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A study ofImmigration Policy LabETH Zurich and Stanford University came to the conclusion in 2018 that work bans are more expensive for states than they assume. But even those who are allowed to work often only find access to precarious employment relationships such as temporary work or low-wage helper work, partly because the qualifications they bring with them are often difficult to use in Germany.

But this inequality is not only evident among refugees. On the one hand, educational success depends heavily on social background. Children with a migrant background reach out more often, primarily because of theirworse social situationlower school qualifications. This means that social background can also influence later opportunities on the labor market through education.

Access to the labor market also manifests itself in other waysDiscrimination: Applicants with a Turkish-sounding name had to write an average of seven applications, while applicants with a German name only had to write five before they were invited to an interview. People with Arabic sounding names cut inStudieseven worse.

Fewer young people are moving up

A look at the age structure also shows that the shortage of skilled workers is continuing to grow due to demographic change: fewer and fewer young people are moving in, and the proportion of 15 to 24-year-olds is significantly higher among people with an immigration history than among people without.

The crisis is not demographic, it is political

The overall population in terms of the proportion of young people is strong compared to the 1980sdeclined. In what is now the Federal Republic of Germany, one in six people (16.7 percent) were 15 to 24 years old. In the population without a history of immigration, the proportion of the same age group in 2025 was only 8.5 percent. In contrast, the proportion of young people in the population with a history of immigration was 12.2 percent.

The proportion of young people varies greatly from region to region. The 15 to 24 age group was represented above average in the city states of Bremen with 11.1 percent, Hamburg with 10.5 percent and in the state of Baden-Württemberg 10.4 percent. Instead, the proportion of young people in Brandenburg was 8.8 percent, and in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Saxony-Anhalt, each at 9.1 percent, below the national average.

Germany was noisy when it came to the proportion of young peopleEU statistics agencyEurostat at the beginning of 2025 was 10.0 percent, slightly below the EU average. This is 10.7 percent. The highest proportion of young people aged 15 to 24 in the European Union was in Ireland at 12.7 percent, followed by Denmark and the Netherlands at 12.2 percent each. The lowest proportion of young people within the EU is in Malta at 9.4 percent and Bulgaria at 9.5 percent.

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