Germany has a shortage of workers – so it’s turning to India for help

BBC:

Germany is continuing to struggle with a shortage of skilled workers, as elderly staff retire, and there are not enough young candidates to fill their roles. To try to alleviate the problem the country is increasingly turning to workers from India.

For Handirk von Ungern-Sternberg, it started with an email that dropped into his inbox in February 2021. It had come from India.

The gist of the message was: “We have lots of young, motivated people looking for vocational training and we’re wondering if you’re interested.”

Von Ungern-Sternberg was working for the Freiburg Chamber of Skilled Crafts in southwest Germany, a trade body that represents skilled workers, from bricklayers and carpenters, to butchers and bakers, and the companies that employ them.

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’ guild. Butchers all over Germany were having a particularly hard time. It was a sector in marked decline.

From 19,000 small, family-run businesses in 2002, there were fewer than 11,000 left by 2021. Employers were finding it almost impossible to recruit young people to take up an apprenticeship.

“The butchery trade is hard work,” says the butchers’ guild head, Joachim Lederer. “And for the last 25 years or so, young people have been going in other directions.”

Back in India, at Magic Billion, the employment agency that had sent that initial email, it managed to recruit 13 young people, who arrived in Germany in the autumn of 2022 to begin their butchery apprenticeships in small towns along the border with Switzerland. They would spend part of their time at college.

Among them was 21-year-old Anakha Miriam Shaji. Like many of her cohort, 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 living standard so high. I wanted good social security.”

Anakha had come to work for Lederer in the town of Weil am Rhein, in the far southwestern tip of Germany, up against both the Swiss and French borders.

Three years later a lot has changed. Von Ungern-Sternberg no longer works at the chamber.

He has instead set up his own employment agency, India Works, in partnership with Aditi Banerjee, of Magic Billion, to help bring more young Indian workers to Germany.

From those original 13 there are now 200 young Indians working in German butchers’ shops.