Germany Needs Workers While One In Ten Young Adults Sits Out

Germany says it needs more workers to rescue its aging economy. Yet one in ten 20-to-24-year-olds is outside both work and education, nearly six in ten lack key qualifications, and the available data point to an immigration problem Berlin does not even fully quantify.

Young Germans outside work and education in 2024.

Only a quarter of the 450,900 young Germans outside work and education were actively looking for a job in 2024. Photo: Getty Images

Germany has spent years warning that it is running out of workers. Companies cannot find enough nurses, electricians, technicians or craftsmen, while an aging population is preparing to leave the labor market in large numbers. Yet 10% of people in Germany aged 20 to 24 were neither working nor enrolled in education or training in 2025, according to the Federal Statistical Office.

The rate has risen steadily, from 8.8% in 2022 to 9.5% in 2024 and now 10%. Statisticians call the group NEETs, short for “not in employment, education or training”. It includes jobseekers, people with health problems, parents caring for children and young adults temporarily waiting to start work or further education.

Germany remains below the EU average of 12.9%. The Netherlands manages just 5.6%, while Sweden and Czechia are slightly above 7%. France stands at 16.2% and Romania at 22.8%. The more troubling part is the trend: across the broader group of 15-to-29-year-olds, NEET rates have fallen in much of Europe. Germany was one of only three EU countries where the rate increased between 2015 and 2025.

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Hundreds of Thousands Without Qualifications

The headline figure becomes more concerning when the composition of the group is examined. Germany’s latest education report counted roughly 450,900 NEETs aged 20 to 24 in 2024. Only a quarter were actively looking for work.

Of these, 59% had neither completed vocational training nor obtained the school qualification required to enter university. A further 29% had dropped out of school, vocational training or university, while 86% had last participated in formal education more than a year earlier.

That is the real problem for an economy already struggling to grow. Germany does not merely need more people of working age; it needs people capable of filling skilled jobs. A vacancy for an electrician, nurse or machinist cannot be filled simply by adding another unqualified 22-year-old to the population statistics.

Germany once had an unusually effective answer to this problem. Its dual vocational system moves young people directly from school into companies while they earn recognized qualifications. In 2024, 12% of young adults in Germany combined education and employment in this way, compared with just 2% across the 22 European countries examined in the report. Even that advantage has been weakening.

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Migration Is a Big Part of the Equation

The more politically uncomfortable question concerns migration. The education report does not provide a migration figure for the entire NEET population, meaning Germany cannot say from these data how many of the 450,900 young adults are immigrants or come from immigrant families.

Where the report does break down the figures, however, the pattern is striking. More than half of female NEETs have an immigration history, with a majority of those women having arrived in Germany within the previous five years.

The geography points in the same direction. In larger German cities, 10.6% of young adults were outside both work and education, compared with 7.9% in rural areas. Across the EU, the relationship is reversed, with higher NEET rates in rural regions. Germany’s large cities are also precisely where immigrant populations are most concentrated.

Immigration can ease demographic pressure when newcomers work, train and pay into the system. Germany has imported people without importing the workforce its economy was supposed to gain. This is happening as the economy weakens: factories are cutting jobs, growth remains feeble, and the welfare state must be financed by a shrinking share of productive workers.