Germany to Need Additional 280,000 to 690,000 Nursing Professionals by 2049

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Germany is expected to deal with sharp labour shortages in the next years.
• In the worst-case scenario, the country anticipated to need 690,000 nursing staff by 2049
• Germany is already making efforts to recruit foreign nursing staff.

Due to the ageing population, Germany is expecting to see a substantial shortage of nursing staff, with projections indicating that the country will need 280,000 to 690,000 additional nurses by 2049.

The recently released nursing force forecast by the German Federal Statistical Office, Destatis, has revealed that the need for nursing staff throughout the whole country is anticipated to increase from 1.62 million in 2019 to 2.15 million by 2049.

This marks a significant increase of 33 per cent and suggests that the country will need foreign nurses to deal with the shortages in the field.

Based on a new forecast for the nursing workforce market (nursing force forecast), the need for employed nursing staff is expected to increase from 1.62 million in the pre-Corona year 2019 by a third (+33 per cent) to 2.15 million in 2049.

Germany’s Federal Statistical Office, Destatis

To better understand the shortages the country will deal with, the forecast has outlined two variants.

As Destatis explains, the first variant, which has been named the “trend variant”, takes into account demographic developments and positive trends observed in the nursing labour market since 2010. Under this scenario, the number of employed nursing staff is anticipated to increase to 1.74 million by 2034 and to 1.87 million by 2049.

However, even with this optimistic projection, Destatis stresses that the number of nursing staff would fall short by 90,000 by 2034 and 280,000 by 2049, below the needs that the country expects to have.

The second variant, referred to as “status quo variant”, takes into consideration only the effects of demographic changes on the future number of nursing staff. According to this variant, the number of nursing staff in Germany will fall from 1.62 million in 2019 to 1.48 million by 2034 and to 1.46 million by 2049.

Based on this scenario, which represents the worst-case scenario, the country will be in need of 350,000 nursing staff by 2034 and 690,000 nursing staff by 2034.

This forecast suggests that the country needs to take immediate action and ensure that it will be able to cover the needs in the field.

To help the country deal with its ongoing shortages in the medical sector, Germany is continuing its efforts to recruit additional nurses from Latin America. The Federal Employment Agency of Germany has said that the country has the potential to recruit around 700 nursing staff per year.