More than half of German companies report labour shortages

This is just what the biting edge of demographic collapse looks like. Inflation, economic stagnation and yet perpetually tight labor market because there are not enough young workers to support steady state demand.

i am egyptian, and i can tell for a while now germany have been getting the cream of the crop from egypt, mainly engineers, programmers and to a large extent medical doctors and pharmacists (although doctors have a slight preference to UK, many still go to germany)

and german have also for a while replaced french as the second most popular foreign language ( english is the first foreign language)

and compared to france for example, germany have a good rep, if you are good you will be promote to management and leadership, in france companies (the reputation is) there is a limit to how far up you can go

maybe they should try offering competitive wages to those skilled workers. surprisingly it tends to attract motivated folks.

Labour shortage is a dogwhistle request for underpaid immigrants

Labour shortages or not willing to pay market wages?

I don't understand what's going on. On one hand there is 'recession' 'layoffs' , on the other hand there are 'labor shortages'. Strange times.

I am German. Indeed the German population is quite old, and employers prefer young workers. I think other factors (or overlooked groups) to be considered are:

Many family men and women in prime working age are not willing to move. The housing market is stressed (rents are exploding everywhere). Often Middle-Aged Germans must do caretaking work for old parents, and cannot move for this reason.

Many non-family-starting Germans (from all age groups) are living in single-person households. Although if they are unemployed and able to move where the work is, many don't. Because of these people are prosperous, or are prosperous enough for a while. And they often have skills from previous careers. They just not need to take any unrelated job. So they can afford to wait and choose.

These highly skilled people in demand have enough wealth (savings and inherited wealth) and even enough income to get along, even though they _could_ make more money elsewhere. So they are also not on the job market.

Even if they did a retraining and pivoting, then many employers do not want to hire them permanently or not at all. Temporary or precarious jobs are the increasingly common here, no end in sight.

So… I’ve been reading The End of the World is Just the Beginning… in it he keeps talking about the aging population in Germany, China, Japan, etc and how this is going to lead to mass labor issues among other problems. Seems like I’ve seen similar headlines about other countries this week, so maybe there’s more structural issues going on here

Peter Zeihan has been making a big deal about this decade being the beginning of demographic decline for Germany and many Boomber-dominated countries; their population curves have inverted pyramid shapes from the elderly down to children.

The Boomers are beginning to retire, switching from mainly producers to consumers, and there aren't enough in later generations to replace them.

Perhaps this helps explain the very welcoming immigration policy of Germany, and less so for France which has a more stable chimney shape.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany

As unemployment rate is low higher wages dont solve the problem.

Germany has one of the worst demographics that means people are mass retiring with plump pension plans but there are not enough younger workers to replace them reducing productivity and taxes. So either the retirees give up their pensions or the workers get shafted with higher taxes. US has this problem too, but in the European welfare state this is much more acute. In the middle of this, Germany has to re-build its decayed Armed forces given the war in Europe.

If you are economic immigrant to Germany make it transitionary, your ultimate destination should be preferably outside of Europe.