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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.

Immigrants perform worse in the labor market than natives, likely because of the low transferability of home-country professional certificates. The standardized recognition of professional certificates in the host country represents one policy for increasing their transferability.This paper investigates the effects of a large recognition reform in Germany on the labor market outcomes of non-EU immigrants.

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.

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.