A growing number of German companies are employing refugees

A growing number of German companies are employing refugees, with the figure tripling in just over a year, according to the latest ifo Randstad Personnel Manager Survey.

22 percent of the companies surveyed in the first quarter of 2017 reported employing refugees over the past 24 months, versus just 7 percent in the last quarter of 2015.

Companies primarily employ refugees as trainees (43 percent of companies employing refugees). 40 percent of companies employ them as supporting staff, 33 percent as interns and another 8 percent as skilled workers. Refugees are more frequently employed as trainees in manufacturing than in distribution or the service sector.

Those firms with experience of employing refugees cited residen- cy status as the greatest recruitment barrier (45 percent), fol- lowed by the employment ban on refugees from safe countries of origin (43 percent), the duration of administrative procedures (36 percent), approval from the authorities (31 percent), recognition of foreign professional and educational qualifications (22 percent), costs related to the inhouse supervision of refugees (19 percent), the priority review, which only exists in certain regions of Germany (18 percent), as well as the internal administrative costs of the review process (14 percent).

58 percent of companies currently report no previous experience of employing refugees to date. According to 19 percent of survey participants, this is generally due to a lack of any opportunity to employ refugees in their companies due to special requirements in terms of language, qualifications or other branch-specific conditions.