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Especially the highly skilled are turning their back on Germany
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Longing for Switzerland: Many skilled Germans are drawn to Zurich and other Swiss cities
Quelle: Picture Alliance / Westend61
Last year 270,000 citizens left Germany, an above-average number with a university degree. Longing destinations are Switzerland, Austria and the United States. The population continues to grow, for a reason.
When the immigration of foreigners, which has been strong for many years, has been widely debated, the emigration of Germans hardly attracts attention. It also reaches a considerable extent. According to the federal government’s current migration report, around 58,000 more German citizens left the country permanently than those who moved here.
This so-called net migration occurs if permanent emigration (270,294) is subtracted from immigration (212,669). Data from the Federal Statistical Office, to which the Federal Government refers in its migration report, show a negative balance since 2005: more German citizens emigrate than move to the country. In the years 1990 to 2004, population statistics showed more and more incoming Germans than German emigres, but mainly due to the statistical peculiarity that the millions of ethnic German returnees and their families were and are registered together with the citizens of the territory. federal in migration statistics. In the meantime, however, this group hardly plays a role anymore: according to the migration report, only about 6,000 of the German returnees (or their spouses or descendants) were still there in 2019.
The current migration report states about this statistical peculiarity: “Taking out the people included in the expulsion process who are registered in the immigration statistics as immigrants of Germans, the migratory balance of German nationals has been negative since the 1980s. However, taking into account the influx of late repatriation, the migratory balance was positive until 2004 “.
Loss of migration of 336,000 Germans
Particularly for the years since 2016, population statistics show higher emigration of Germans. In the four years to the end of 2019, a total of 335,787 more German citizens moved than in (1,062,737 emigrants and 726,950 immigrants). However, the increase is strongly related to a change in the way the Federal Statistical Office collects data: until 2015, only those people who de-registered from a new address abroad were counted as emigrants.
That changed a year later. Since then, statisticians have assumed that people who logged out here but did not re-register elsewhere in Germany have moved abroad. Because it is unlikely that large numbers of Germans will not register at their new place of residence after moving within Germany, the Federal Institute for Population Research also considers the new survey method to be more reliable.
The strong emigration of Germans is also significant in the context that deaths have also exceeded births for a long time. The migration loss of 336,000 Germans in the last four years and the more than 3.6 million citizens who died was compared to just 2.4 million births to mothers with German citizenship.
So Germany loses several hundred thousand citizens every year due to excess deaths and emigration. However, this is more than offset by high levels of immigration. According to the migration report, the migratory surplus of non-Germans in 2019 was 385,000 (1.3 million immigrants and 960,000 emigrations). In the previous year, the surplus was significantly higher, specifically 460,000.
The most important destination countries for German emigrants in 2019 were Switzerland (16,340), Austria (11,904), the United States (9,782), the United Kingdom (6,766) and Spain (6,479). The German returnees came mainly from Switzerland (10,523), the United States (9,498), Austria (6,631), the United Kingdom (6,385) and Turkey (5,620).
A quarter of Germans with a migrant background
The migration report also makes statements on the composition of immigrant groups, according to which around a third of net migration in 2019 was accounted for by citizens of other EU countries (113,000), another third by humanitarian immigration (126,000). ) and the remaining third by non-EU citizens who immigrated with work, family reunification or other visas. The nationalities with the highest net migration in 2019 were Romania (40,000), Syria (24,000), Turkey (21,000), India and Bulgaria (20,000 each).
Also due to the continued high level of immigration, according to the migration report, a good quarter of Germans now have a migration background (21.2 million), that is, they immigrated themselves or have at least one parent who was born without a German passport. . That is around 400,000 more than the previous year. The people of Turkey make up the largest group here.
The Federal Institute for Population Research presented the results of the study last year regarding the qualification level of Germans who were leaving. As a result, around three-quarters of those who emigrated had a college degree, in the population that is only a good quarter. There are a disproportionately large number of migrants with a master’s or doctorate degree, while people with a certificate of completion of secondary or lower studies are under-represented.
Most of the respondents were also young. On average, they are 37 years old, about ten years younger than the general population. With their study, the researchers examined why people move abroad and how emigration affects their lives. To do this, more than 10,000 people were interrogated on several occasions, each with an interval of a few months, whose addresses were randomly selected from the population register of their last place of residence in Germany.
