One sixth of the 1.7 million employees in the care sector who are subject to social insurance contributions come from abroad. These people help to ensure that the labor shortage in the care sector is not even greater and that care operations can be maintained. This is shown by a recent study by the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) in Nuremberg.
According to the study, total employment in the care professions rose by 26% between 2013 and 2023. Since 2022, however, employment growth in the care sector has been driven exclusively by foreign employees, while the number of German care workers has declined.
Over the last ten years, almost 87,000 foreign people have been newly employed in geriatric nursing, and 109,000 in nursing. In nursing, the proportion of foreign nursing staff has thus increased from 4.9 to 14.5 percent, and in the geriatric nursing professions from 6.9 to 18.9 percent. In 2023, more foreign nursing staff from non-EU countries were working in Germany than from the EU. Within the EU, nurses mainly come from Poland, Croatia and Romania. Nationals from Turkey and Serbia, on the other hand, form a large group among nursing staff from third countries. A particularly large number of nurses from countries with recruitment agreements come from Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Philippines, India, Tunisia and Vietnam.
The study also shows that the employment group of refugees is a valuable resource for recruiting nursing staff, partly because they already live in Germany. However, a lack of language skills, non-existent certificates or a lack of professional qualifications are often inhibiting factors for the integration of refugees.
In view of the results of the study, the authors conclude: „Germany will continue to be urgently dependent on the immigration of foreign nursing staff. In addition to simplified immigration rules for workers, it will also be necessary to improve the integration of care workers from abroad and generally improve the welcoming culture in order to keep the new employees in Germany in the long term.“
The study can be accessed at: https://doku.iab.de/forschungsbericht/2024/fb2224.pdf
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Universitätsklinik Tübingen. Foto: tünews INTERNATIONAL / Mostafa Elyasian.
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