Germany Faces Labour Shortage, Recruits from India

Germany’s industry and business sector continue to face difficulties due to a shortage of skilled workers, as many older staff retire and there are few young candidates to replace them. To address this issue, the country is increasingly recruiting workers from India.

For Handirk von Ungern-Sternberg, it all began with an email that arrived in his inbox in February 2021. The email came from India.

The core message was: “We have many motivated young people looking for vocational training, and we want to know if you are interested.”

At the time, von Ungern-Sternberg worked for the Freiburg Skilled Crafts Chamber in south-western Germany, a chamber of commerce representing skilled workers, from stonemasons and carpenters to butchers and bakers, as well as the companies that employ them.

The email arrived at an opportune moment.

“Many entrepreneurs were desperate, unable to find anyone to work for them,” said von Ungern-Sternberg. “So we decided to give it a try.”

Von Ungern-Sternberg then reached out to the chairman of the local butchers’ union. Butchers across Germany were facing major difficulties at the time. The sector was experiencing a sharp decline.

From 19,000 family-run small businesses in 2002, the number had dropped to fewer than 11,000 by 2021. Entrepreneurs found it nearly impossible to recruit young people for apprenticeship programmes.

“Butchery is hard work,” said Joachim Lederer, Chairman of the German Butchers’ Union. “And for about the last 25 years, young people have chosen other paths,” he added.

In India, the Magic Billion labour agency that sent the initial email successfully recruited 13 young people to Germany in the autumn of 2022 to begin apprenticeships as butchers in small towns along the border with Switzerland. They also spent some time at university.

Among them was 21-year-old Anakha Miriam Shaji. Like many of her peers, it was her first time leaving India.

She still remembers her excitement. “I wanted to see the world,” she said. “I wanted to improve my standard of living. I wanted good social security.”

Anakha came to work with Lederer in Weil am Rhein, at the south-western tip of Germany, bordering Switzerland and France.

Three years later, much has changed. Von Ungern-Sternberg no longer works at the chamber of commerce.

Instead, he has founded his own recruitment agency, India Works, partnering with Aditi Banerjee from Magic Billion, to help bring more young Indian workers to Germany.

From those initial 13, there are now 200 young Indians working in German butcher shops.

As the baby boomer generation retires, there are not enough young Germans to replace them, due to low birth rates. However, India has plenty of young people.

“India is a country with 600 million people under the age of 25,” said Banerjee. “Only 12 million enter the workforce each year. So there is a huge surplus of labour.”

India Works is preparing to bring 775 young Indians to Germany this year to start apprenticeship programmes. The professions they will enter are very diverse. For example, there are currently road builders, mechanics, stonemasons, and bakers.

Since the two countries signed the Migration and Mobility Partnership Agreement in 2022, skilled Indian workers have found it easier to work in Germany. Then, at the end of 2024, Germany announced it would increase the quota for skilled work visas for Indian citizens from 20,000 per year to 90,000 annually.

Official German data shows that in 2024 there were 136,670 Indian workers in the country, up from 23,320 in 2015.

Aditi Banerjee said India has young labour, while Germany has jobs.

Young Indians who have secured jobs in Germany through India Works give similar explanations for their decision to try their luck in a new country: difficulty finding work in India, higher salaries in Europe, and ambitions to shape their own lives.

One of them is 20-year-old Ishu Gariya, who after finishing secondary school in India considered university and working in computing.

“But I didn’t want to waste money on a degree and then work for a company with low pay,” he said.

Instead, he left the outskirts of Delhi for a village in Germany’s Black Forest, where he is apprenticing as a baker.

His workday only ends at 3 a.m., and he wears a thick jacket to ward off the winter cold. But he feels happy.

“We get high salaries here,” he said. “So I can help my family [back home] financially.”

He also said he likes the clean air in rural Germany.

Ajay Kumar Chandapaka, 25, came from Hyderabad to join Spedition Dold, a transport company based in a village outside Freiburg. He has a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering.

“It was very difficult for me to get a job in India,” he said. “So I thought Ausbildung would be a better role for me.”

Ausbildung is the German term for training or apprenticeship.

Lederer, who took on two from the first group, now has seven young Indians working for him. He said these new workers have saved his business.

“When I started 35 years ago, there were eight shops like mine within a 10 km radius,” he said. “Now I’m the only one left. I wouldn’t be able to survive in business today without India.”

On the same street, in the town hall of Weil am Rhein, Mayor Diana Stcker of the conservative Christian Democratic Union