Germany reveals Ukrainian refugee trend

Of the million-plus Ukrainians who came to Germany as refugees, some 44% want to remain in the country, officials in Berlin revealed at a press conference this week.

Germany’s Institute for Employment Research (IAB) teamed up with the Institute for Economic Research (DIW), the office for migration and refugees (BAMF) and the Federal Institute for Population Research (BiB) to survey a representative sample of 7,000 Ukrainians currently residing in the country as refugees. The number of those who wish to remain has grown by five percentage points, from 39% in a survey conducted last summer.

The officials attribute this to the high participation of refugees in language courses, intended to boost their ability to find jobs. Some 75% of all Ukrainian arrivals have either finished German courses or were currently taking them.

“Germany is investing in a sustainable integration of these refugees in the labor market,” said Yuliya Kosyakova of the IAB.

However, the survey has shown that only 18% of the refugees polled had found a job, up only a single percentage point from last year.

Expanding child care is important “for parents to be able to attend language courses and be employed and for children to learn the language, have a structured everyday life and make friends,” according to Andreas Ette of the international migration research group at BiB.

Finding jobs is more challenging for women with small children, especially those who came to Germany without their husbands. Half of the female refugees from Ukraine have at least one child, while only 3% of mothers with small children have found employment. Meanwhile, 23% of male Ukrainian refugees work, because they “generally have a partner with them,” the German officials said.

At the end of 2022, there were 1.05 million displaced Ukrainians in Germany, which made them the second-largest diaspora in the central EU country after 1.34 million ethnic Turks.

Around 8.6 million Ukrainians who left the country due to the ongoing conflict do not intend to return, a Kiev nonprofit called the Ukrainian Institute for the Future (UIF) said in June. The institute’s latest report noted that Ukraine had been on a downward demographic spiral by the time of the 2014 Maidan coup, having lost almost seven million residents since declaring independence in 1991. 

Even counting Crimea and the four regions that voted to join Russia last year, Kiev could claim only 29 million residents at this point, the UIF noted, warning the government that it was swiftly running out of people.