The current economic boom in Germany has driven demand for qualified labor to an all-time high in the eurozone's biggest economy, the Federal Labour Agency found on June 27.
"German industry's willingness to hire new employees is currently very high," the agency said in a monthly study. The office's monthly BA-X index, which measures the number of unfilled vacancies in companies in industry rose by 10 points month-on-month to a record 214 points in June, the agency calculated. That represented an increase of 60 points over the year-earlier figure.
With its falling birth rate, Germany will have to respond "more massively and more rapidly than other countries" to the decline in its working population, the OECD warned in a recent report. And that includes dismantling some of the bureaucratic barriers faced by qualified workers coming from overseas, the OECD said.
Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2007
