Help wanted: Germany hires its next generation of workers from abroad

The first thing Andrea Ortuño learned to make in her new job was spätzle, the traditional squiggly egg noodle staple of German cuisine. Ortuño, 19, is a first-year apprentice cook at Der Pschorr restaurant in Munich, a world away from her hometown of Quito, Ecuador.

“In Ecuador things are really bad. There’s so much unemployment and to study is really expensive,” she said. As an apprentice in Germany, she can learn a profession, and earn money while she does it.

“It’s a great opportunity,” said Ortuño.

Of 24 apprentices at Der Pschorr, half of them come from outside the European Union, including from Azerbaijan, Ukraine and Vietnam.

Germany is banking on young migrants and refugees to round out its next generation of skilled workers. For generations, the country has built its labor force through apprenticeships, which combine two to three years of free post-secondary vocational training with paid on-the-job experience.

Nearly half of Germans started their careers as apprentices, known colloquially as Azubis. They became not just the restaurant cooks but the electricians, nurses, bank managers and butchers, who, for decades, drove Germany’s economic success. There are more than 300 professions with officially recognized apprenticeship programs.

But these days, there are more apprenticeships than young Germans who want to do them. Germany’s population is aging, and at the same time more young people are opting to go to college instead. In the 2025-2026 academic year, 1 in 3 first-year apprenticeships went unfilled, a shortage of 130,000 future skilled workers.

So, German businesses began casting a wider net. Even as they stepped up efforts to make apprenticeships more attractive for young Germans, they started recruiting young foreigners — refugees and prospective migrants — to learn and earn a living as Azubis.

Meanwhile, Germany has changed its visa rules to make it easier to hire apprentices from abroad, raising age ceilings and lowering language requirements. It is partnering with foreign governments, language schools and even influencers to spread the word.

The federal Labor Agency’s foreign recruitment website, Make it in Germany, showcases testimonials of immigrant apprentices training as hotel managers, electricians and truck drivers. One in six apprentices in Germany this year is a foreigner, mostly from outside the EU — an increase of 30% since 2022.

As tens of thousands of young migrants risk everything to reach Europe illegally each year, German society continues to clash over immigration and refugee policies. So, apprenticeship has provided a legal pathway to Germany that’s meant to be a win-win for both businesses and apprentices.

“You can make it a political thing, but it is basically also a very important business decision for companies, because they’re short of workers,” said Jennifer Crutchfield, project coordinator for a national Chamber of Commerce and Industry project that helps businesses recruit refugee and immigrant apprentices.

It’s not a golden ticket, however. Prospective Azubis need to have finished school in their home countries, as well as learn German and pass a language test before they can even apply. The apprenticeships are seen as an education, not a job, with pay to match — on average, only offering about $15,000 a year — one of the reasons many young Germans are taking a pass. 

Alexander Kritikos, a research director at the German Institute for Economic Research, said recruiting apprentices from abroad isn’t about cutting costs, but about building a skilled workforce needed for Germany’s future. 

“In Germany, we are not hiring cheap labor from poor countries,” he said. Rather, Germany needs “people with … education from poor countries.”

Nonetheless, the hiring boom has created opportunities for bad actors as well. According to German media reports, shady recruiters in Vietnam, for example, charge recruits thousands of dollars in facilitation fees. And some foreign Azubis have reported exploitation and illegal working conditions once they’re hired.

Even within the law, the long hours, low pay and hard work of apprenticeship are a challenge — and even more so for migrants adjusting to a new language and culture. Apprentice cook Andrea Ortuño cautioned that people who think migrating to Europe means an easy life are mistaken. 

“You really have to want it,” she said. 

Der Pschorr owner Juergen Lochbihler, Ortuño’s boss, said that when he opened the restaurant 20 years ago, all of his apprentices were Germans. But now, they train in a team he compares to the star athletes of Munich’s FC Bayern soccer club: young people from Germany and around the world working together to create a German success story. 

“The future is international,” he said.