Because of the increasing number of people needing care in Germany, the private care providers have asked to be allowed to continue to recruit their staff in India and China. “There are not enough professionals in Germany.” Said Thomas Greiner, the head of the care employers’ association.
Greiner demanded that the quota of nurses from other EU member states in Germany should be upheld and those nurses are likely to migrate from non-EU countries. saying, from India and China, in which they were already talking to recruit skilled workers. However, the German federal government had deliberately excluded the care sector, as they exposed the precedence test for medical doctors and engineers from around the world. From the perspective of the government, care sector simply does too little for their own industry.
The private providers are becoming increasingly important within the care industry in Germany. Meanwhile, 40 percent of nursing homes and 62 percent of outpatient services are privately owned. In 1999 the percentage was 35 percent for the nursing homes, and outpatient services at just under 26 percent.
The care industry is booming. According to a study by the RWI Economic Research Institute on behalf of private care providers, between 1999 and 2009 a total 29 billion euros invested in nursing homes and services. At the same time 160,000 jobs were created in the industry, 90,000 of them for nurses.