Germany continues to face a shortage of skilled workers, as older staff retire and there are not enough new candidates to fill their roles.
To alleviate the problem, the country is increasingly turning to workers from India, according to a BBC article.
For Handirk von Ungern-Sternberg, it all started with an email that arrived in his inbox in February 2021. He had come from India.
The gist of the message was: “We have many young and motivated people looking for professional training and we are wondering if you are interested.”
Von Ungern-Sternberg worked for the Freiburg Chamber of Crafts in southwestern Germany, a trade body representing skilled workers, from bricklayers and carpenters, to butchers and bakers, as well as the companies that employ them.
And the email arrived at an opportune moment.
“We had a lot of desperate employers who couldn’t find anyone to work for them,” says Von Ungern-Sternberg. “So we decided to give it a chance.”
His first call was to the head of the local butchers’ community.
Butchers across Germany were having a particularly difficult time. It was a sector in marked decline.
From 19,000 small family businesses in 2002, fewer than 11,000 remained by 2021.
Employers found it almost impossible to recruit young people to start an internship.
“The butchering trade is hard work,” says the head of the butchers’ community, Joachim Lederer. “And for the last 25 years, young people have gone in other directions.”
In India, Magic Billion, the recruitment agency that sent that initial email, managed to recruit 13 young people, who arrived in Germany in the fall of 2022 to begin their apprenticeships in butcher shops in small towns along the Swiss border. They would spend part of their time in college.
Among them was 21-year-old Anakha Miriam Shaji. Like many of her peers, it was the first time she had ever left India.
She remembers her excitement.
“I wanted to see the world,” she says. “I wanted to make my standard of living that high. I wanted good social security.”
From those 13 starters, there are now 200 young Indians working in German butchers.
Germany is suffering from a demographic crisis. The economy needs to attract 288,000 foreign workers a year, according to a study from 2024.
Otherwise, the workforce could shrink by 10% by 2040, the Bertelsmann Foundation report said.
As the last generation of baby boomers heads toward retirement, there are not enough young Germans to replace them, due to a low birth rate.
But there are many young people in India.
“India is a country with 600 million people under the age of 25,” says Banerjee. “Only 12 million enter the workforce every year. So there is a huge surplus of labor.”
India Works is preparing to bring 775 young Indians to Germany this year to begin their internships.
The range of professions they will pursue is wide. There are now road builders, mechanics, bricklayers and bakers – and more.
Official German figures show that in 2024 there were 136,670 Indian workers in the country, up from 23,320 in 2015.
Young Indians who have found work in Germany through India Works offer similar explanations for their decision to try their luck in a new country – the difficulties of finding a job in India, the higher salaries available in Europe, and the ambition to forge their own path in life.
For example, there is Ishu Gariya, a 20-year-old who, after graduating from Indian high school, was considering getting a university degree and a job in computers.
“But I didn’t want to spend my money on this degree and then get a job at a company with a low salary,” he says.
So he swapped a suburb of Delhi for a village in the Schwarzwald Region of Germany, where he is an intern at a bakery.
His shift didn’t end until three in the morning, and he’s wearing a hooded jacket to protect himself from the winter weather.
But he is happy.
“We have high salaries here,” he says. “So I will be able to help my family [back home] financially.”
And he says he loves the fresh air in the German countryside.