BERLIN (MNI) – Changes in German regulations on May 1 that give
citizens from the eight new EU member countries the right to work in
Germany will help ease tensions in the country’s labor market, a new
study released Tuesday shows.
According to estimates by Germany’s IW economic research institute,
the net migration to Germany from the new Eastern European EU member
states could amount to up to 370,000 this year and 430,000 next year.
Given Germany’s robust economic upswing and an increasing lack of
skilled labor, the moment to open the German labor market is ideal, IW
director Michael Huether said at a press conference to present the
results of the study.
“The demand for labor continues to remain high,” Huether explained.
“An influx [of labor] from Eastern Europe will somewhat lessen the
problem of a lack of skilled labor even if it is not a [complete]
solution,” Huether explained.
The IW institute is mainly funded by German industry.
The head of Germany’s engineering sector group VDMA, Thomas
Lindner, already warned at the end of last year that the shortage of
skilled labor threatens the country’s economic potential.
Experts in the field note that unlike earlier recoveries, “the
number of unemployed is eroding faster than the number of employed,”
Lindner noted. Germany’s “job miracle” is the precursor of a “dramatic
escalation: the supply of skilled labor is becoming a limiting factor —
in production, but also in research and development,” he elaborated.
–Berlin bureau: +49-30-22 62 05 80; email: twidder@marketnews.com
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