Why EU Workers Are Packing Their Bags and Leaving Germany

High Costs, Discrimination, and the Broken Promise of a Better Life

You would think Germany would be a dream destination for workers from poorer parts of Europe. The pay is higher. The economy is stronger. There are hundreds of thousands of job openings that need to be filled. So why are so many EU citizens packing up and leaving after just a few years?

A recent report from the German government reveals a troubling trend. Despite a desperate need for workers in hospitals, construction sites, and government offices, a large number of migrants from countries like Romania, Poland, and Bulgaria are choosing to go home. Net migration from other EU countries fell by two-thirds in 2024. Many of those who do arrive don’t stick around past the four-year mark.

This matters because Germany’s workforce is shrinking. The baby boomer generation is retiring, and there simply aren’t enough young Germans to replace them. The country has been relying on workers from other EU nations to keep things running. And now that pipeline is drying up.

The Hard Numbers

The shortages are not minor. In the ten sectors with the most acute need, over 260,000 positions cannot be filled with qualified workers. Healthcare alone has 46,000 vacant jobs. That means longer waits for medical appointments. In construction, the lack of workers is slowing down the building of new homes.

At the same time, the number of EU citizens coming to Germany is dropping. In 2024, immigration from Croatia fell 30%. From Poland, it fell 21%. From Bulgaria, 19%. The total net migration from the EU last year was just under 39,000 people. The year before, it was nearly 117,000. That is a massive drop.

But the bigger problem is not just who comes. It is who stays.

The Real Reasons People Leave

If you ask the migrants themselves, they give very clear answers. And none of them have anything to do with complicated economic theories.

Money doesn’t go as far as they thought. Yes, wages in Germany are higher than in many EU countries. But rent is high. Utilities are high. Groceries are high. After all the bills are paid, many workers find they are not saving as much as they hoped. The extra money just isn’t worth the sacrifice of being far from home.

They don’t feel welcome. The study found that nearly 40% of respondents said they did not feel comfortable in Germany. More striking is that almost half - 49.4%, reported experiencing discrimination at work. That is not a small fringe complaint. It is a mainstream experience. When you go to work every day and feel like you are treated worse than others, eventually you stop putting up with it.

Their skills are ignored. A nurse from Spain. A construction supervisor from Poland. A mechanic from Hungary. They arrive with years of experience, only to be told their qualifications don’t count. The bureaucratic process to get their credentials recognised is slow, confusing, and exhausting. So instead of working in their trained profession, they end up in low-skilled jobs. And then they wonder why they bothered moving at all.

The system is exhausting. Everything in Germany seems to require paperwork. An appointment to get an appointment. Forms in triplicate. Offices that are only open during working hours, so you have to take time off work to visit them. For someone navigating this in a second language, it is not just frustrating. It is demoralising.

What This Actually Means

Let’s be clear about what is happening here. Germany is not failing to attract workers. It is failing to keep them.

Think of it like a company with a high turnover rate. If employees keep quitting, you don’t blame the job market. You look at what is wrong with the workplace. Are the managers treating people badly? Is the pay not keeping up with the cost of living? Is the work itself miserable? In Germany’s case, the answer to all three questions is increasingly yes.

The workers who leave are not making an irrational choice. They are making a practical calculation. They came looking for a better life. What they found was high rent, workplace discrimination, and a bureaucracy that treats them like a nuisance. Going home starts to look pretty good.

The Gap Between Recruitment and Reality

Germany has spent years trying to attract skilled workers. There are recruitment campaigns. There are welcome centres. There are websites advertising the benefits of living and working in Germany.

But recruitment is the easy part. Keeping people is hard.

When you promise workers a better life and then deliver discrimination and red tape, they do not stick around hoping things will improve. They leave. And they tell their friends and family back home not to bother.

This is why immigration numbers are falling. Word gets around. The Romanian electrician in Berlin tells his cousin in Bucharest that the rent eats half his salary and the foreman makes jokes about his accent. The cousin decides to try Austria instead. Or stays home.

What Would Need to Change

Fixing this would require Germany to do things differently. None of them are impossible. But all of them would require effort and money.

First, the qualification problem needs a real solution. If a nurse is qualified to work in Spain, she should be qualified to work in Germany without jumping through hoops for a year. Either EU professional qualifications mean something across borders, or they don’t.

Second, discrimination needs to be taken seriously. When half of migrant workers report experiencing it, that is not a few bad apples. It is a systemic problem. That means enforcement. It means penalties for employers who tolerate it. It means making clear that treating workers differently because of where they come from is not acceptable.

Third, the cost of living cannot be ignored. High wages are meaningless if housing eats them up. Germany needs to build more affordable housing, not just for migrants but for everyone. Workers need to see a path to a decent standard of living, not just a slightly better one than they had before.

Fourth, bureaucracy needs to be simplified. This is not just a migrant problem. Germans complain about it too. But for someone navigating the system in a second language, it is a barrier that can feel insurmountable. If Germany wants people to stay, it needs to make the basic tasks of settling in - registering an address, opening a bank account, applying for benefits – make it as simple as possible.

The Bottom Line

Germany is running out of workers at the worst possible time. The baby boomers are retiring. The economy is struggling. And the very people who could help fill the gaps are deciding it is not worth it.

The reasons are not mysterious. They are not hidden in complex data. Migrants are leaving because they cannot afford to live, because they face discrimination, because their skills are wasted, and because the system wears them down.

Until Germany addresses these basic facts, no amount of recruitment advertising will solve the labour shortage. Workers vote with their feet. And right now, their feet are taking them elsewhere.