Gajic on Germany's new quotas for workers from the Balkans: All profiles are leaving, mostly from Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina

Germany's labor market is attractive to all types of workers, from those with lower and medium qualifications to university graduates and PhDs, economist Mihailo Gajic tells Kosovo Online. He emphasizes that the largest number of workers from the Western Balkans going to Germany come from Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

On June 1st, the third phase of Germany's law aimed at attracting foreign skilled workers from the Western Balkans came into effect. The new quotas introduced by Germany for Balkan workers, Gajic notes, apply to all profiles.

“Certain procedures must be followed to obtain a work permit. The conditions for a work permit have been significantly reduced compared to a few years ago because Germany faces a declining number of workers each year due to demographic trends. The number of people entering the labor market is significantly lower than the number of people retiring. The demand is high for all types of workers, from those doing more manual jobs like drivers and forklift operators to those with university degrees and high qualifications, such as programmers. It is not limited to one type of job, there is a whole range of occupations that are in deficit in Germany,” Gajic told Kosovo Online.

The most populous countries in the region, as he says, also offer the largest number of workers for migration to Western Europe and Germany. Among them are certainly Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, due to their larger populations.

Gajic points out that labor movement is a "dynamic process" subject to frequent changes and cannot be precisely tracked.

“Germany doesn’t track worker movements perfectly either because workers don’t just leave; they also return multiple times or go to a third country. So, it is quite challenging to clearly see what is happening with the labor force from the Western Balkans,” Gajic notes.

Regarding the profiles of those going to Germany, Gajic highlights that all types of workers are leaving, regardless of their education level.

“It is not just a brain drain of university graduates; everyone is leaving, from those with the lowest qualifications to those with PhDs. Due to the population structure, those with medium vocational training leave the most. People with medium and lower incomes have a greater earning premium if they go to work in Germany than if they stay in their home country. So, it's more appealing to them than to those with a university degree,” Gajic explains.

He notes that Serbia has been a country of emigration for decades, but this has been a relief valve preventing social problems given the high unemployment rate in the local labor market.
Considering economic trends over the past decade, Serbia has managed to avoid a serious unemployment rate problem. He mentions that it is now around nine percent, significantly lower than in previous years when it exceeded 25 percent.

Serbia is trying to find the right way to address the labor shortage and is currently turning to neighboring countries, as a large number of people from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro traditionally move to Serbia.

“We are trying to solve this through the integration of the labor market within the Open Balkan initiative with Albania and North Macedonia, to attract certain worker profiles missing in the Serbian economy. People are also coming from Asia and are being employed in various sectors – construction, as bus drivers, cooks, and waiters,” he says.

Gajic believes that the outflow of labor to other countries could be prevented by introducing new policies related to working conditions and wage levels.

“To achieve this, we need several years of high economic growth rates that will allow wages to rise significantly and approach the levels of countries to which our workers traditionally go. If wages in Serbia were satisfactory, the attractiveness of the German labor market would diminish,” Gajic concludes.