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Comment by nicbou | Hacker News Reader

In Germany, two job board owners I know reported a marked drop in job listings. There are just as many job-seekers, but fewer employers that are hiring.

All of my friends are either reporting layoffs or belt tightening at work. It's hitting recent graduates and retrained workers really hard.

On the other hand, Germany is about to dramatically lower the residence permit and citizenship requirements, as it panicks about its aging population. This might further depress the wages.

The skilled worker shortage (Fachkräftemangel) is constantly in the news, although the worker response is the same as in other Western countries: have you tried paying more? Relaxing job requirements? Training people?

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Same in Finland, the employer side constantly screaming about worker shortage, but I have been in several interviews where when I presented my salary request, I could see the person grin because they thought it is too high but it was just little higher than my current... Luckily, I got a new job in Hong Kong with decent salary and lower tax rate.

They want to saturate the market with massive immigration so the salaries never rise, but when there are too many developers, they can actually push them down. If there would be real shortage, they would increase the salary.

> If there would be real shortage, they would increase the salary.

Technically, a shortage occurs when an external mechanism prevents price from rising. Think price gouging laws as once such mechanism.

Where I am from, doctors are prevented from raising their prices in an effort to give equal access to all, rich and poor alike, which would allow for a doctor shortage to transpire. But a real labour shortage outside of such unique situations would be unheard of.

>Where I am from, doctors are prevented from raising their prices in an effort to give equal access to all, rich and poor alike, which would allow for a doctor shortage to transpire

Where is this? In Austria the government also caps how much the public doctos can charge, but guess what, most doctors exit the public system and go fully private where they can charge however much they want leaving a shortage in the public system.

> On the other hand, Germany is about to dramatically lower the residence permit and citizenship requirements, as it panicks about its aging population. This might further depress the wages.

The immigration system in Germany is peculiarly hostile, getting visas is very hard, interacting with the local bureaucracy is a nightmare, there are so many catch-22 that either you pay an agency or… God knows how they do it. If you are not an EU citizen, it may take months to complete all the paperwork even to the perfect immigrant.

Streamlining this system and lowering the requirements for a skilled visa won’t hurt anybody, it would just make the lives of some people less miserable.

Consider that Germany has an almost endless reservoir of potential immigrants in southern Europe (and to some extent in Turkey), it has been there for the past decades and salaries keep going up.

> getting visas is very hard

Compared to US visas, it's a walk in the park.

>Streamlining this system and lowering the requirements for a skilled visa won’t hurt anybody

It will defiantly hurt the housing market because Germany doesn't build enough.

But the entire world wants to go to the US, Germany is not that attractive.

The population is getting older and they need more young people in order to support their standards of living and to care for the ageing population. So either they get more people and house them somehow, or they will have to accept that there won't be enough working people to support the country with their work. Another option, and I'm being sarcastic here, is to destroy the healthcare system like the Conservative government is doing in the UK and hope that eventually life expectancy will drop.

>But the entire world wants to go to the US, Germany is not that attractive.

Germany, along with UK, Canada, AU, NZ, is attractive for all those for whom a US visa is out of reach, a.k.a. almost everyone.

Most international workers who can't get into US, go for the next best thing which is those countries.

The difference is US is better at absorbing more immigrants due to already being a melting pot and being the country with the fastest growing economy due to VC funding so importing more workers means more fuel on the fire.

VC funding is almost non-existent in most of those other countries so importing more workers in a stagnat economy, means just wage suppression and increasing housing costs.

> Germany is about to dramatically lower the residence permit and citizenship requirements

Time to buy a house if you can afford it. Immigration of skilled workers drives house prices up!

Immigration of any sort does. Whether it’s a house or a run down apartment it’s all the same supply pool.

If you couldn't afford a house before, you defiantly can't at these rates, and if you can't afford a house now, you definitely won't after the immigration boom.

This is the point of higher interest rates. It means monetary policy is working.

It's meant to lower growth and investment.

Tech salaries in West and South Europe indicate that there is no shortage.

Huh? Salaries in tech are lower in south europe than in east europe. Assuming there are any tech jobs in south europe.

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