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How Immigration Is Reshaping the German Pension System
Description
Germany's pay-as-you-go pension system faces a demographic crunch as the baby boomer generation retires. In this episode, Lucas and Luna examine a specific policy lever: the 2023 Skilled Immigration Act and its projected impact on the pension contribution ratio. With 1.7 million job vacancies and a shrinking native-born workforce, the show drills into a Bundesbank estimate that net immigration of 400,000 workers per year could stabilize the pension contribution rate at 22 percent through 2040. They also discuss the friction points — from visa processing bottlenecks to the integration challenge — and what this means for the broader European labor market. No abstract demographic hand-wringing: just the numbers, the policy, and the real-world trade-offs.