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The nationwide joint study by the Institute for Employment Research (IAB), the Federal Institute for Population Research (BiB), the Research Centre of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF-FZ) and the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) at DIW Berlin focuses on the arrival, current living conditions and future plans of Ukrainian refugees in Germany. The analyses are based on approximately 11,700 interviews with Ukrainian men and women who arrived in Germany between 24 February and 8 June 2022.

Refugees are increasingly succeeding in integrating into the German labour market. Particularly female refugees benefit from improved recognition and training opportunities for their qualifications in the teaching and health care sectors.

Germany is faced with the immense challenge of integrating thousands of refugees. The most successful path to integration is through the workplace. Refugees bring with them motivation, energy and commitment. Many of them are qualified professionals. Moreover, while fleeing from their home country, they gained a wide range of experiences useful for German employers. Refugees in Germany are eager to find a job and contribute actively to the society they live in. For refugees, employment is a new start in a new country and an opportunity to find home in Germany. For companies, employing refugees is an opportunity to fill open positions and invest in the future. Due to the demographic change and ageing society, many companies find it difficult to recruit the qualified professionals they need. The fact that the majority of refugees who come to us are under 35 years old enables companies to find and bind the employees they need.

At the moment, a lot of refugees fleeing from war and persecution are desperate to get to Germany. On the one hand, it is a great challenge. On the other hand, it is a great opportunity: Germany can offer the refugees a safe haven and at the same time enable them to get qualified and enter the labor market.

The 2019 Global Education Monitoring Report by UNESCO congratulates Germany for its policies in recognizing migrants and refugees’ prior qualifications and skills. The recognition of foreign professional qualifications increases the probability of immigrant employment by 45 percentage points and the hourly wage by 40%. A million migrants a year visit the website ‘Recognition in Germany’, which offers advice on the recognition procedure in 9 languages. The information on foreign vocational training systems and professional qualifications in the BQ-Portal is accessed annually by over 180,000 website visitors, primarily assessment authorities, companies and experts.

The Federal Ministry of Education launched the project “Prototyping Transfer – Professional Recognition through a Qualification Analysis” that is aimed to decrease the organizational cost of the qualification analyses, assure their quality and provide the applicants the financial assistance.

Our compact one-page country overviews give you a valuable insight into the country of origin of refugees in question. They have been updated and give you the recent informations.

You want to foster integration of refugees? Or: You have already received a job application from a refugee and do not know how to evaluate his or her qualification and to determine whether the qualification is appropriate for the employment you are offering. Have a closer look at our compact country overviews, which are now available in English. They will give you a valuable insight into the country of origin of refugees in question and its education system. Our country overviews are available for following countries: Syria, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Eritrea.

The flyer in Ukrainian describes important stages on the way to recognition of foreign professional qualifications and lists free sources of information and advice.

The new Employment Ordinance has been in force since 1 July. The list of occupations in which people with vocational training qualifications from non-EU countries can access the German labour market is now also in place. Following the "EU Blue Card" for the highly skilled, the improved recognition of foreign vocational qualifications and the relaxations in the rules for students from non-EU countries who wish to stay on to work in Germany, this is a further important step towards making it easier for workers from outside the EU to enter the German labour market and towards covering the skills gap in the German economy via migration.