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Business Daily

Germany turns to India for skilled workers

Business Daily

BBC

Business

4.4816 Ratings

🗓️ 17 March 2026

⏱️ 18 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Germany is in the throes of a demographic crisis, in which there are not enough young people entering the labour market to replace those who are retiring.

There is an annual net loss of 400,000 to the workforce and the shortage is particularly acute in many of the traditional craft industries.

One solution appears to lie overseas and in particular, India. We hear from young Indians who have signed up for apprenticeships in a range of industries in Germany’s south-west, close to the border with Switzerland.

If you'd like to get in touch with the team, our email address is businessdaily@bbc.co.uk

Presented and produced by Tim Mansel

Business Daily is the home of in-depth audio journalism devoted to the world of money and work. From small startup stories to big corporate takeovers, global economic shifts to trends in technology, we look at the key figures, ideas and events shaping business.

Each episode is a 17-minute, daily deep dive into a single topic, featuring expert analysis and the people at the heart of the story.

Recent episodes explore the weight-loss drug revolution, the growth in AI, the cost of living, why bond markets are so powerful, China's property bubble, and Gen Z's experience of the current job market.

We also feature in-depth interviews with company founders and some of the world's most prominent CEOs. These include Google's Sundar Pichai, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, and the CEO of Canva, Melanie Perkins.

(Picture: Ajay Kumar Chandapaka, an apprentice mechanic from India at Dold Spedition, a haulage firm in Buchenbach in the Black Forest in Germany.)

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.

0:06.3

Hello and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC World Service. I'm Tim Mantle.

0:12.8

In late 2022, 13 young people arrived in southern Germany from India.

0:19.1

They'd all signed on for a three-year apprenticeship in the meat

0:22.6

business working at family butchers across the region. I wanted to make my living stand so high.

0:29.3

Yeah, I wanted a good social security. Now I'm taking care of my family. Every month, I can send

0:35.2

money to my family proudly.

0:39.4

Today, just over three years later, there are some 200 young Indians in butcher shops across

0:46.8

southern Germany. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Now ambitious young people are coming

0:52.8

from Delhi, from Kashmir, from Assam, to learn their trade as mechanics, truck drivers, and even kindergarten teachers.

1:01.0

Germany, without foreign workers, without people from other countries, couldn't exist.

1:08.0

We need people from abroad, and without without them our society wouldn't work.

1:14.4

And nor, it seems, would India, with its huge surplus of young people desperate for well-paying jobs.

1:21.3

That's all coming up in today's program.

1:27.5

It's quite a steep climb up here.

1:31.3

It smells brand new.

1:33.2

Yeah, it is.

1:35.0

Still got the plastic wrapping on the seat.

1:39.1

The Dold Hallage Company has just invested in its first two electric trucks.

1:45.3

We're in the black forest, a few kilometres from the city of Freiburg.

1:48.8

You ready?

1:50.2

The man at the wheel is Sebastian Dold.

...

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