#labor-migration

#labor-migration

One graduate with a maths degree says he spent more than a year applying to over 1,000 roles in the U.K. without landing a single offer-only to secure a job in Austria within weeks. "The job market in the U.K. is so ridiculous," Anna, his Austrian-born partner, said in a TikTok video that's now resonating with thousands of frustrated young workers. "Even for qualified people, it's so hard to find a job."

Geographer Stefan Kordel from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, southern Germany, told DW that labor migration in the care sector has become highly professionalized. Government and private sector players, even individual clinics and nursing homes, are competing for nursing staff and trainees. Economic interests are at stake. In extreme cases, his colleague Tobias Weidinger added, it might go something like this: "They say to the recruitment agency, 'Please deliver us five immigrants for the next training year.'"