Far from viewing the influx of some 1.1 million refugees and migrants in 2015 with trepidation, Ernst & Young survey results published on Tuesday show that over half of the 3,000 SMEs polled see the new arrivals as one way to alleviate the country’s shortage of skilled labor. 85 percent of companies say they would happily employ someone who came to Germany as a refugee.
Over half of SMEs say that a shortage of qualified workers is hitting their balance books hard: companies calculate that a shortage of some 326,000 workers has directly resulted in an annual revenue shortfall to the tune of 45.9 billion euros ($50 billion). Indeed, experts have long warned that Germany is likely to lose economic steam, as its population ages, the birth rate stays low, with fewer, qualified workers to replace them.