Integrating refugees into Germany’s labor market is a gradual process. First reports provided on 19 December by Joachim Möller, head of the Institute for Employment Research (IAB), indicate that in the eleven months between December 2015 and November 2016, 34,000 refugees from the eight prime exodus countries found regular paid employment and 22% of those are in temporary employment. The data pales in comparison to the 406,000 numbers of refugees that have registered for employment out of a grand total of 1.2 million asylum seekers that arrived in Germany over 2015 and 2016. However this influx of refugees has also enabled new job opportunities in local communities including language teaching, teachers, security personnel, social assistants, etc.
New jobs for Germans. The latest refugee labor related data from the IAB is unlikely to assuage Germany’s populists who harshly criticize refugees for ‘taking jobs away from Germans’. Yet the IAB indicates that far from taking jobs away, the influx of refugees has created between 50,000 and 60,000 new employment opportunities.
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