Germany's ageing population and low birth rates mean Germany must attract at least 400,000 skilled immigrants annually to keep up with demand.
Germany faces massive labour shortages unless it begins recruiting skilled immigrants to replace those retiring from the country's ageing workforce, Federal Labor Agency Chairman Detlef Scheele, explained.
Scheele said demographic changes mean Germany will have roughly 150,000 fewer working-age residents this year alone, and warned, "It will be much more dramatic over the coming years. The fact is: Germany is running out of workers," he said. "From nursing care and climate technicians to logisticians and academics, there will be a shortage of skilled workers everywhere."
Scheele stated, "You can stand up and say, 'We don't want foreigners,' but that doesn't work."
Beyond training low-skilled workers, retraining those whose professions have disappeared, or forcing people to work longer, the only way to master the situation will be to significantly increase immigration.
The Federation of German Trade Unions (DGB) has also called on lawmakers to create faster and more reliable nationwide standards that will allow those immigrants with the legal status of "Dulding," or tolerated, as well as those in the country on humanitarian grounds, to enter the workforce and attain long-term employment perspectives.
The logical outcome of encouraging higher levels of immigration from the Global South to the wealthy countries that are still enjoying the benefits of centuries of their exploitation is to drain those poorer societies of their valuable workers. This British socialist is in favour of open borders but selfishly wanting our NHS and other vital services to be propped up by people coming from far more needy nations is no remedy in the short or long term. The soft-left media here in the UK is blaming Brexit for the lack of sufficient agricultural and haulage workers, when in fact it's a longstanding problem of capitalism: bad jobs, poor conditions, low pay, no trade unions, no workplace democracy. Therein lie some of the solutions.
ReplyDeleteThere is a serious issue concerning what was one time called the brain drain, where skilled workers were enticed with high pay and having once completed their training to depart their home countries.
ReplyDeleteSome have suggested that such workers poached from the undeveloped and developing world, are encouraged to return to their home countries to share their enhanced experience. I'm not sure it is a permanent answer. Why not make it condition that UK-trained staff are sent abroad?
We have some countries like the Philippines whose main natural resource happens to be the export of people.
In my youth, I was privileged that local councils provided bursaries and government-provided grants for people to improve themselves, and manufacturing had well-organised apprenticeships to train people in trades. All gone, now.