More news about Germany’s “new emigration”

The German government has started subsidizing moves by unemployed Germans to help them get to jobs they find abroad. Known as “mobility incentives,” these payments cover moving costs for workers and their families anywhere in the world. The amounts range from 100 euro to around 1000 euro, depending on circumstances, and cover several separate items from actual travel to the cost of moving furniture or buying new furniture and other basic necessities.

Officials at the European Commission in Brussels told Reuters that they were unaware any of other EU country offering such help for moves abroad.

As reported by National Public Radio (April 16, 2008) and Forbes (April 15, 2008), this assistance has drawn mixed reactions in Germany. Some economists say it is a bad policy for a nation with a shrinking population and a comparatively low birth rate. Some critics describe it as a recipe for disaster because Germany already has a shortage of skilled labor that is now acute in some industries such as engineering and car-making and also looms in sectors such as retail sales, health care and finance. More generally, “depopulation” has become an issue in some areas, especially the formerly Communist east Länder. The funds are also available for relocations inside Germany.

So far, the number of beneficiaries has been limited, apparently in the hundreds. Officials in Germany were quoted saying that statistics were not yet available because the program is administered through local authorities, not the central government.

The German authorities apparently feel the program may prove a useful step in fighting unemployment which is in excess of 3.5 million people - about eight percent of the labor force (one percentage point higher than the eurozone average).

Related Post: The mobility initiative fits into a larger picture of a degree of greater readiness among Germans to emigrate, which we noted here last week.

Germans are emigrating at a record pace despite their country’s strengthening economy. In 2006, roughly 155,000 Germans left the country, apparently drawn by economic hopes. It marks a new peak of emigration since the postwar wave in the 1950’s. (The net balance of influx and outflow turned “negative” again in 2005 when departures outnumbered returns and immigrants.)

Germany, like other countries in the European Union, is experiencing the effect of EU encouragement for mobility among member states. Britain, Sweden and the Netherlands, are also seeing record-breaking emigration figures. (Some of their emigrants go to Germany.)

For German officials, the trend increases concerns about a looming shortage of highly-skilled workers: the government is working on measures to attract qualified immigrants to fill this gap. The new pattern also aggravates the problem of an ageing German population and shrinking work force that is liable to poses problems for retirement financing.

When Juergen Schupp, of the German Institute of Economic Research, surveyed 2,000 Germans in the 16-year-old category, he found that about two percent of them were considering leaving the country, many of them within a year. Some of them cited the tax burden, together with obstacles to small-scale entrepreneurship, as reasons for considering emigration from Germany. Of course, this does not mean all of them will actually leave. Simultaneously, German academics are showing more mobility, but many of them leave only temporarily.

In the meantime, even Germans who stay can leave vicariously — by watching reality shows (such as “My New Life” or “My New Job”) about their countrymen emigrating.

A survey by Germany’s Federal Statistics Office listed the top destinations for German emigrants in 2005:

Switzerland: 14,000
United States: 13,000
Austria: 10,000
Poland: 9,000

Via NPR, March 28, 2008; Deutsche Welle July 2006; German Institute for Economic Research.