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The federal cabinet approved the fifth report on the Recognition Act. The report bundles the results of the recognition monitoring and, as in previous years, provides important information on the current development in the area of professional recognition - at the political level as well as in practice.

On 30 November, the German Government agreed its key points on the immigration of skilled workers from third countries. It thus paves the way for the most modern immigration law Germany has ever had. The key points provide for facilitating immigration firstly for skilled workers with recognised foreign vocational qualifications, secondly for skilled workers with proven professional experience, and thirdly by introducing an opportunity card for job-seeking.

For 10 years, the official website "Make it in Germany" has accompanied many stories in the field of skilled immigration. On the anniversary page, qualified professionals share their personal experiences, voices from the partner network reflect on political developments and employers provide insights into successful recruitment abroad. Moreover, the timeline shows how the project has developed in the last 10 years.

The flyer in Ukrainian describes important stages on the way to recognition of foreign professional qualifications and lists free sources of information and advice.

The Federal Statistical Office has published the recognition figures for 2022. In 2022, for the first time since Corona, the Federal Statistical Office recorded significantly more recognitions. 52,300 people received their recognition notification in this country. This is an increase of 11% compared to 2021. The number of new applications also rose sharply, by 13% compared to the previous year. This development is enormously important for Germany: Most companies face immense skills shortages.

Immigrants perform worse in the labor market than natives, likely because of the low transferability of home-country professional certificates. The standardized recognition of professional certificates in the host country represents one policy for increasing their transferability.This paper investigates the effects of a large recognition reform in Germany on the labor market outcomes of non-EU immigrants.

The new Employment Ordinance has been in force since 1 July. The list of occupations in which people with vocational training qualifications from non-EU countries can access the German labour market is now also in place. Following the "EU Blue Card" for the highly skilled, the improved recognition of foreign vocational qualifications and the relaxations in the rules for students from non-EU countries who wish to stay on to work in Germany, this is a further important step towards making it easier for workers from outside the EU to enter the German labour market and towards covering the skills gap in the German economy via migration.

In most OECD European countries and in the United States, labour migration in 2022 was at a 15 year record level. Year-on-year increases in the primary destination countries were striking: the number of new permanent-type labour migrants increased by 59% in Germany.

The recognition of foreign professional qualifications is essential for securing skilled workers in Germany. The study conducted by the German Economic Institute on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action on the recognition of foreign professional qualifications from a company perspective shows that companies see potential in the recognition of foreign qualifications, but demand simpler, faster and digitally supported procedures.

The 2019 Global Education Monitoring Report by UNESCO congratulates Germany for its policies in recognizing migrants and refugees’ prior qualifications and skills. The recognition of foreign professional qualifications increases the probability of immigrant employment by 45 percentage points and the hourly wage by 40%. A million migrants a year visit the website ‘Recognition in Germany’, which offers advice on the recognition procedure in 9 languages. The information on foreign vocational training systems and professional qualifications in the BQ-Portal is accessed annually by over 180,000 website visitors, primarily assessment authorities, companies and experts.