Germany is continuing to struggle with a shortage of skilled workers, as elderly staff retire, and there are not enough young candidates to fill their roles. To try to alleviate the problem the country is increasingly turning to workers from India.

For Handirk von Ungern-Sternberg, it started with an email that dropped into his inbox in February 2021. It had come from India.

The gist of the message was: "We have lots of young, motivated people looking for vocational training and we're wondering if you're interested."

Von Ungern-Sternberg was working for the Freiburg Chamber of Skilled Crafts in southwest Germany, a trade body that represents skilled workers, from bricklayers and carpenters, to butchers and bakers, and the companies that employ them.

The email arrived at an opportune moment.

"We had a lot of desperate employers, who couldn't find anyone to work for them," says Von Ungern-Sternberg. "So we decided to give it a chance."

His first call was to the head of the local butchers' guild. Butchers all over Germany were having a particularly hard time. It was a sector in marked decline.

From 19,000 small, family-run businesses in 2002, there were fewer than 11,000 left by 2021. Employers were finding it almost impossible to recruit young people to take up an apprenticeship.

"The butchery trade is hard work," says the butchers' guild head, Joachim Lederer. "And for the last 25 years or so, young people have been going in other directions."

Back in India, at Magic Billion, the employment agency that had sent that initial email, it managed to recruit 13 young people, who arrived in Germany in the autumn of 2022 to begin their butchery apprenticeships in small towns along the border with Switzerland. They would spend part of their time at college.

Among them was 21-year-old Anakha Miriam Shaji. Like many of her cohort, it was the first time she had ever left India.

She remembers her excitement. "I wanted to see the world," she says. "I wanted to make my living standard so high. I wanted good social security."

Anakha had come to work for Lederer in the town of Weil am Rhein, in the far southwestern tip of Germany, up against both the Swiss and French borders.

Three years later a lot has changed. Von Ungern-Sternberg no longer works at the chamber.

He has instead set up his own employment agency, India Works, in partnership with Aditi Banerjee, of Magic Billion, to help bring more young Indian workers to Germany.

From those original 13 there are now 200 young Indians working in German butchers' shops.

Germany is suffering a crisis of demographics. The economy needs to attract 288,000 foreign workers per year, according to a 2024 study. Otherwise the workforce could shrink by 10% by 2040, said the report by the Bertelsmann Foundation think tank.

As the last of the baby boomer generation edge into retirement there are not enough young Germans to replace them, due to a low birth rate. But there are plenty of young people in India.

"India is a country with 600 million people below the age of 25," says Banerjee. "Only 12 million come into the workforce every year. So there's a huge labour surplus."

India Works is preparing to bring 775 young Indians over to Germany this year to begin their apprenticeships. The range of professions they will join is extensive. There are now road builders, mechanics, stonemasons, and bakers, to name four.

It has been easier for skilled Indian workers to be able to work in Germany since the two countries signed the 2022 Migration and Mobility Partnership Agreement. Then at the end of 2024, Germany announced that it would increase the skilled work visa quota for Indian citizens from 20,000 per year to 90,000.

Official Germany figures show that in 2024 there were 136,670 Indian workers in the country, up from 23,320 back in 2015.

Young Indians who have found employment in Germany via India Works offer similar explanations for their decision to try their luck in a new country - the difficulties of finding a job in India, the higher salaries available in Europe, and the ambition to make their own way in life.

There's Ishu Gariya, for example, a 20-year-old who after finishing Indian high school was contemplating a university degree and a job in computers. "But I didn't want to waste my money on this degree and then find work in a company for a low wage," he says.

So he swapped a Delhi suburb for a village in Germany's Black Forest region, where he's a baker's apprentice. His shift didn't finish until three in the morning and he's ensconced in a hooded down jacket to keep out the winter weather. But he's happy.

"We have high wages here," he says. "So I'll be able to help my family [back home] financially."

And he says he loves the clean air in the German countryside.

Ajay Kumar Chandapaka, 25, came from Hyderabad to sign on with Spedition Dold, a haulage company based in a village outside the city of Freiburg. He has a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering.

"It was very difficult for me to get a job in India," he says. "So I thought that Ausbildung would be a better role for me." Ausbildung is the German word for training or apprenticeship.

Lederer, who took two of the original cohort, now has seven young Indians working for him. He says that his new recruits have saved his business.

"When I started out 35 years there were eight shops like mine within a 10km radius," he says. "Now I'm the only one left. I wouldn't be in business today without India."

Up the street at the town hall in Weil am Rhein the mayor Diana Stöcker, from the conservative Christian Democratic Union of Germany party, is also about to hire workers from India. The municipality have identified two young men who'll be coming to Germany later this year to work as kindergarten teachers.

"We've been looking for teachers all over Germany," she says. "But they're really hard to find."

Once a member of the German Bundestag, Stöcker was elected mayor in 2024. She acknowledges the difficulty Germany has in finding young talent across the board and says there's only one solution. "We have to look overseas. It's the only possibility." (BBC)

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