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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.

Every year, the BIBB Recognition Monitoring Project takes a closer look at recognition figures. Applications for federal occupations saw growth of 10 percent compared to the previous year. 34,700 new applications for federal occupations were received in the recognition offices in 2021 ; 41% of these – and therefore significantly more than in previous years – were submitted from abroad, in particular from third countries.

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.

On 11 January 2013, policy makers and representatives from chambers of commerce, companies, public authorities and migrants’ associations came together for a conference entitled “Skilled workers – Transparency – Respect: tapping the domestic pool of skills” at the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi) in Berlin. The participants discussed new approaches to assessing and recognising foreign qualifications and exchanged their experiences.