Foreigners have worse chances on the German job market than Germans, the Cologne Institute for Economic Research has found. Worst affected are immigrants from Arabic countries.
No German passport, no job? Using data from the German Federal Employment Agency, the Cologne Institute for Economic Research (IW) has now for the first time compared the chances of Germans and foreigners in the country’s labor market. The result is clear: people who move to Germany have significantly worse prospects of landing a job.
Unemployment is at seven percent in Germany
People on part-time employment, public officials, and the self-employed were not taken into account by the new statistics – which meant that the owners of foreign restaurants, for instance, were also not counted. Only foreigners with residence permits were included, so refugees and asylum seekers were also left out of the figures.
But despite these limitations, there remains an “unambiguous overall picture,” said Holger Schäfer, labor market consultant at IW, “Fundamentally, foreigners have a much higher unemployment rate than Germans.” In fact, it is about double: while the unemployment rate in Germany in June was 7 percent, for people without a German passport it was around 14 percent.
Arab immigrants most affected
Immigrants to Germany from the Arab world had the highest unemployment rates – particularly people from Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran. “That is surely also because people don’t come to Germany for professional reasons, but as refugees, and so find it more difficult to get a professional foothold,” said Schäfer.
Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at
via Immigrants struggle in German job market | Germany | DW.DE | 12.09.2013.
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