(Reuters) -Germany is still an attractive destination for skilled workers from abroad, although migrants report racism and discrimination in everyday life, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said on Wednesday.
Having tracked the careers of 30,000 highly qualified people who wanted to come to Germany as migrant workers since August 2022, their willingness to move to the country had increased rather than decreased over the time, the OECD said.
Some 92% of participants in its poll lived abroad and were still interested in moving to Germany, it added.
However, people who had already moved to Germany reported more discrimination than expected before the move.
“Experiences of discrimination are reported, especially when looking for accommodation and in public,” the OECD’s Thomas Liebig said.
More than half of respondents who managed to move to Germany said they had been subject to discrimination as a result of their origin when they were trying to rent or buy a flat or house.
That fear was lower, at around a third, for those who have not yet made the transition.
Around 37% of respondents also reported incidents of discrimination during visits to restaurants or shops.
Germany’s economy largely depends on foreign workers, which was highlighted by fresh figures from the country’s Federal Employment Agency.
Figures for November showed that a 0.6% rise in the number of employees subject to social security contributions to 35.1 million was mostly due to workers from countries outside the European Union.
“This also applies if we exclude the refugee countries Ukraine, Syria and Afghanistan. This trend is likely to continue,” said Andrea Nahles, chair of the Federal Employment Agency.
(Reporting by Holger Hansen and Christoph Steitz; Writing by Bartosz Dabrowski; Editing by Rachel More and Sharon Singleton)
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