Germany needs at least 40,000 new public sector workers to cope with the huge influx of migrants, and may even have to force older civil servants out of retirement, think tanks and unions have claimed.
The Institute for Employment Research (IAB) estimates the country will need more than 20,000 teachers, 10,000 tutors, 3,000 police officers and 3,000 civil servants to help more than a million migrants integrate into German society.
However, despite the large number of new workers required, Germany will unlikely see an employment boom as all the jobs require a high level of training. “The higher the qualifications required, the more difficult it is to find a suitable candidate in a short space of time,” Enzo Weber of the IAB said.
Even if they do find enough staff, Weber adds, the authorities will still have to spend time and money incorporating and training thousands of new employees.
One solution could be to bring former civil servants out of retirement, which would be easier than training new ones, Michael Hüther, director of the Institute of the German Economy (IW), told Die Welt. This would be especially useful for processing the likely huge increase in asylum applications in the coming months.
Meanwhile, Klaus Dauderstädt, President of the German Civil Service Federation (DBB), outlined the scale of the problem.
“The burden falls on basically all sectors of the civil service,” Mr Dauderstädt said, including federal and local police forces, local government, public health services, social workers and day care centres. The court system will also have to deal with an increased number of appeals from rejected asylum seekers.
Within the space of a month, Mr Dauderstädt has also doubled his estimation of the number of new teachers needed to 20,000.
“Everywhere, the effectiveness of our structures will be put to the test,” Mr Dauderstädt warns.
Earlier this month, another think tank warned that Germany will have to raise its retirement from 63 to 70 to cope with the influx. Hans-Werner Sinn, President of the Ifo Institute, said that with more people flocking to Germany “we’d better raise the retirement age to feed them”.
Germany should also abolish the minimum wage, he added, so that more businesses can afford to employ cheap migrant labour. He warned, however, that those who have already come may just be the beginning: “What the German Government has not considered is that those who have managed to come to Germany will have immediately used their mobile phones to send a message to their home countries, putting into motion a new flow of migrants.
“The more you receive, the more set in motion.”
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.