🇩🇪 Germany

Germany is a receiving state: low unemployment and a growing population are partly a receipt for workers from Romania, Poland, the Balkans, Türkiye and elsewhere, not proof that its native cohort is demographically self-sustaining. With a median age of 45.7, persistent natural population decline and youth unemployment rising from 6.9% to 8.3%, the headline 4.1% unemployment rate conceals skills mismatch and dependence on imported labour. AI targets precisely the manufacturing, logistics, care and administrative jobs in which migrant labour is commonly concentrated.

Germany’s 2025 AI Action Plan sensibly links sovereign compute, investment, skills and broad diffusion, while its vocational system provides a stronger retraining base than most EU peers. Execution is the joke: federal-state fragmentation, sluggish permitting, expensive energy, uneven SME digitalisation and cumbersome AI Act compliance obstruct deployment, while compute subsidies remain more coherent than plans for displaced occupations. Immigration is being used as a labour-supply valve rather than paired with a funded lifelong-reskilling and regional productivity strategy.