Refugee-migrants for hire? A few bits & pieces in the news

Last updated on: August 14, 2016 at 12:44 pm by Jane the Actuary

Refugee-migrants for hire? A few bits & pieces in the news 2016-08-14T12:44:43-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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Why is Germany so willing to accept migrants? Paul Mirengoff at Powerlineblog says it’s because of a short- and long-term population decline, citing projections that the population will decline from 81 to 67 million by 2060.

He cites a Telegraph article, but you can also read more on these projections at the German statistics agency site. What’s particularly striking is this: most population projections include alternate scenarios based on higher or lower birthrates. Germany’s alternate scenario doesn’t assume an improved birth rate, but instead assumes a higher rate of immigration. (In the full document, they do discuss alternate birth rate scenarios, but the headline projections don’t consider this.) So far as I can tell, the consensus is that the low birth rate is now too ingrained in the culture to be dislodged.

And Germany is in fact, not just relative to other Eurozone countries but in absolute terms, an economic powerhouse: its unemployment rate is 4.7%, and its youth unemployment rate is 7.7%, the lowest in the EU.

Interestingly, however, unlike the U.S., it’s hard (or perhaps not possible) to find statistics on unemployment specifically among minorities, e.g., Turks. Here’s an article that claims (unsourced and not very credibly) that 80% of Turks in Germany are on welfare. Here’s some data from 2009, from a master’s thesis, that says that at a time when the unemployment rate for Germans “without a migration background” (as they say) was 6.8%/6.4% (men/women), the rate for those with a Turkish background was 18.2%/11.8%. Conversely, the employment rate was 77.2%/68.4% for non-immigrants, 48.5%/37.5% for those with a Turkish background (1st & 2nd generation). A large part of the difficulty is that (as with American-born children of Mexican immigrants) children enter 1st grade with poor German abilities, having not even attended preschool for German exposure there, which hinders them throughout their school careers.

Which brings me to an article in Der Spiegel over the weekend: “Dieter Zetsche: Daimler-Boss lässt in Flüchtlingszentren nach Arbeitskräften suchen.”

Einer der größten Industriearbeitgeber Deutschlands will gezielt Flüchtlinge einstellen. Daimler-Chef Dieter Zetsche kündigte an, in den Flüchtlingszentren Arbeitskräfte zu suchen und für sein Unternehmen anzuwerben.

“Ich könnte mir vorstellen, dass wir in den Aufnahmezentren die Flüchtlinge über Möglichkeiten und Voraussetzungen informieren, in Deutschland oder bei Daimler Arbeit zu finden”, sagte Zetsche der “Bild am Sonntag” (“BamS”). “Die meisten Flüchtlinge sind jung, gut ausgebildet und hoch motiviert. Genau solche Leute suchen wir doch.”

Zetsche fügte demnach hinzu: “Sie können uns – ähnlich wie vor Jahrzehnten die Gastarbeiter – helfen, unseren Wohlstand zu erhalten beziehungsweise zu vermehren. Deutschland kann doch die freien Arbeitsplätze gar nicht mehr allein mit Deutschen besetzen.”

Im August waren 2,8 Millionen Menschen in Deutschland ohne Job. Das war zugleich die niedrigste Arbeitslosigkeit in einem August seit 1991.

Or (to the best of my translation abilities with help from Google),

One of the largest industrial employers in Germany wants to hire refugees. Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche annunced that he wants to look for workers in the refugee centers and recruit there for his firm.

“I can imagine that we will inform the refugees in the reception centers about opportunities and conditions to find work in Germany or at Daimler,” Zetsche said to the Bild am Sonntag. “Most of the refugees are young, well trained*, and highly motivated. That’s exactly the sort of people we’re looking for.” [*well-trained = “gut ausgebildet”, educated or trained in a skilled trade]

Zetsche added, “They could help us, as with the guestworkers from decades ago, help us to retain or increase our prosperity. Germany can no longer fill our job openings with Germans alone. “

In August 2.8 million people in Germany were unemployed. For comparison, that is the lowest unemployement level in August since 1991.

Now, it’s curious that Zetsche is looking to these refugees, when the EU agreements permit workers from anywhere else within the EU to seek employment in Germany. And perhaps this is just a feel-good statement anyway. And it’s by no means clear whether Zetsche and other employers are looking for shortcuts rather than addressing the situation of unemployed and unintegrated immigrants already in Germany.

But in any case, to the extent that Germany absorbs these migrants on a large scale, they’re taking a big risk, with an unknown outcome.

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