Is Germany Facing an Acute Crisis of Workforce?

With the slowdown of immigration inside the EU, the German government fears local companies will continue to face a huge shortage of skilled and unskilled labour. Our consultants have read the German media and summed up the main ideas on this topic in the blog entry below.

In recent years, to address the issue of workforce scarcity, the German authorities run work visas programs for people from outside the EU. Citizens from Bosnia, Albania or Montenegro benefited the most. However, the epidemic slowed the immigration because of travel restrictions and now authorities are starting to feel the pressure from the private sector where the workforce is mostly needed. According to our consultants monitoring the German market, the German Integration Commissioner Annette Widmann-Mauz has warned that the German economy is in “desperate” need of skilled workers. German companies are already short of about 270,000 skilled workers, both men and women.

According to the German commissioner, this is partly due to a decline in skilled workforce immigration from the EU, including engineers, nurses, cooks, craftsmen. It is already known in the European statistics that the number of additional workers arriving from the EU in Germany fell. A wide range of German industries, including construction and railway infrastructure development have become heavily dependent on a largely immigrant workforce from the EU in recent years.

Although the pandemic seems to have put more pressure on the problem, the German government has been trying for several years to reduce this deficit. In 2019, it drafted a law to facilitate the migration of vocational workers to Germany. The law came into force in March 2020, the month of the country’s first national lockdown. At that time, one in five German companies was affected by a shortage of skilled workers according to the KfW-ifo indicator.

According to our consultants, the shortage of skilled and unskilled workers might fell slightly in the following months. But the pressure might return in autumn after all the summer holidays are ending. According to the same KfW-ifo report, 23.7% of German companies reported a shortage of skilled workers in April 2021.

“At the end of the year, the proportion would be as high as before the crisis,” the report warns.

According to schengenvisainfo.com, the German authorities managed to grant 30,200 visas to skilled workers from from outside the EU, between March 1 and December 31, 2020. Among the most important beneficiaries were highly skilled workers from four countries in the Western Balkans: Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Albania.

Our agency recruits for European companies developing railway infrastructure projects. Our candidates are thoroughly scanned before being selected and presented to our business partners. At Geologic HR we put all our leadership and business skills into action for our business partners. We understand the market’s challenges and we are building innovative strategies and online campaigns to recruit the best temporary workers. Last but not least, we ensure that these jobs can deliver both core labour and a sustainable income, with legal protections, wages, and safety nets that are enjoyed by temporary workers in the whole EU, taking pressure from our partners in finding the right people. In case you will have any questions on how we can help you do not hesitate to write us at or give us a call.